Kevin and I just got back from Home Depot. I never thought I’d be at Home Depot on a Saturday night, but there was this great clearance on area rugs. Considering we’re putting so much personal effort into putting our wood flooring in, and we need a few area rugs to break up the space when we’re done, we couldn’t pass it up. Plus, we’ve been huge home improvement geeks lately and love looking for ideas.
Anyway, they had a nice clearance selection, with rugs piled upon rugs spanning several aisles. It was a bit overwhelming when we first got there, but I didn’t want to leave empty handed, so I rolled up my sleeves and dug in – literally.
In the end we left with a matching pair of the same style, one is a runner for our hallway (2’x8′) and one that will go under our bed (8’x11′). The smaller one normally goes for $99 and the larger one normally goes for $349. The smaller one was marked on clearance for $49.99, but for some reason the larger one wasn’t showing up in the clearance system.
The manager came over and looked over both of them while sorta hemming and hawing. He wasn’t convinced that the larger one was on clearance, but I piped up and mentioned they were the same style and a matching set. Why would one size of a style be on clearance and not the other size?
Then Kevin said, "I can take these of your hands tonight. Can you give us both for $75?" The manager pondered his offer a moment and said, "How about $85?"
Kev glanced at me and I shook my head enthusiastically. He looked back at the manager and said, "We’ll take it!"
We had some trouble stuffing the larger one in Kev’s car, but we managed to shove it far enough in to secure the trunk down to see through the back. I even tied a little red flag on the end that was sticking out.
Kev read this book recently that advises to "Always be negotiating". Very good advice, especially when it comes to rugs on clearance! Even though I think I popped a rib digging through the huge rug piles to find that matching pair, the price we got for them in the end was totally worth it. 😉