Jen, your oven thermostat can be recalibrated or perhaps even replaced, most definitely! IIRC you live relatively close to an urban area - try calling around to appliance repair companies to ask who in your area works on old stoves and doesn't just say to throw them out. Emphasize its sentimental value - if you don't object to a "little white lie" you could say you inherited it from Grandma or something. (Well, you inherited it from someone's grandma anyway, when you bought the house! Right? :-)) You might also want to check out The Old Appliance Club, which rebuilds thermostats and locates replacement parts, although you'll still need a local person to actually put it in. I have the hots for Mary Lu's sink. Big time. When we were starving college students, DH and I once rented part of an 1800s farmhouse where the entirety of the kitchen equipment was a freestanding double-drainboard sink almost exactly like Mary Lu's, a stove that made AuntJen's look ultramodern :-) a somewhat random old refrigerator that sounded like a jet engine, and a built-in hutch about 3' wide. That was all. No cabinets, no counters. We prepared everything on the kitchen table and stored the dry groceries on bookshelves in the living room! Oh, and the bathroom consisted of a toilet in the corner of the kitchen. Just standing there in the corner of the kitchen. LOL The week before we moved in the landlord boxed it in and added an RV-sized shower, which is all that would fit. The lady who had the apartment before us had lived there for over fifty years and was perfectly content to wash with her old pitcher and bowl, so landlord wasn't going to go fooling around in there. (I think she came with the house when he bought it!) She had decorated the apartment (except for the kitchen, which was from somewhere around 1900-1910) in 1940 and it was virtually untouched when she died in 1994 and we moved in.

Thank you all for the tips, pictures, and direction to places to buy rugs! Jkom, you sound like a true afficionado. Love the history lesson! You are correct that I don't want a high-quality, collectors' rug in my kitchen. Something like the washable nylon piece you mentioned, or other inexpensive options mentioned by other posters, would be ideal. That the rug is washable - and machine washable at that - is a strict requirement for me. If something falls in my kitchen, it invariably hits the rug. I drip water horribly when washing dishes, and I tend to cook with gusto. (Beatrix, I really got what you said, although I can never convince DH to share a pomegranite with me. :) Interesting that you should mention testing the area with a white bath towel. Our temporary kitchen rug actually is an old white bath rug (cotton, reversible, not the kind with the rubber back), and it gets filthy. Fast. I have a pretty good idea of the gunk that gets around our kitchen floor, even though we are, indeed, a no-shoes house. On our fridge, btw, I have a magnet that says, "I cleaned the house yesterday. Wish you could have seen it." Nolagirl, thank you for the recommendation to Rugland. We're trying to buy from smaller businesses, and it sounds like Edith and Ben would be very helpful. I'm not sure I want a rug over $100 (or even that ) in my kitchen but do have some other bare, less abused spots that need dressing and will check them out. Gibby and Artteacher, good point about choosing a color that hides dirt! And red sauces would blend in just find with the rugs in your picture, Gibby. Beautiful cats! Artteacher, thank you for the link to Horchow. Otherwise, I would have assumed it was a department store on one of the coasts and might not have checked their selection. Eagles, I'd forgotten about Home Goods. That's one of my danger stores... need to leave my wallet in the car, or better yet, at home, when I go there. Sombruil, I'll check Ebay, too. What a deal! Why do you want to cover your entire floor? Wondering if it's simply for the "Middle Eastern" effect - your rugs have some similar patterns to some of mine I picked up in Bulgaria and Morocco. We're covering our entire (living area) basement floor in rugs - a Turkish pattern - rather than redoing the floor down there. I'm really excited about it. It'll take 13 5x8s and 2 4x6s. Jejvtr, thank you for the link. I'm going to put it on my reading list for tomorrow. Good also to hear the testimonial that they've worn well over time. I can see some of the orange in the first picture; but my monitor tends to show some colors off; and I never know how true they are. Diva, my "maybe in my dotage I can have nice x, y, and z" list is growing longer every day! By the time we're in our dotage, though, will we care? That's a big part of what's going on with the basement rugs. They're actually indoor-outdoor rugs, because we need a floor covering but are still figuring out if there are any moisture issues down there. I actually really like them - definitely not a cotton or wool feel, but not a bad kind of plastic, great pattern, good price, can hose them down, and made almost entirely of recycled materials. Maybe when the kids grow up and move out we'll do something more permanent... but then, I hope, there will be grandkids. (DD, DS, no pressure!) I'll keep checking for more ideas, Cate

What are your kitchen colors (wall, cabinet, counter)? What colors do you like? What is your style? As d_gw said, zebra print is pretty versatile. It pairs well with bold colors or neutrals. If you do a Houzz photo search for zebra rug (I searched living photos because I thought there would be more examples than kitchen) you can see what prints others have paired them with. It's a wide range.

Wendy, Your kitchen would look great with a runner or more of that full room look. For the full room you may have to put 2 together to make the full length of you kitchen. Wasn't sure the other colors and style you are looking for but some examples below. the blue full room one not shown in the room is an example of one you can do that doesn't have a border so 2 together can look seem less as one rug. You can sew or use carpet tape to keep them together. lots of other patterns colors and styles you van do this with just as long as it looks seem less from one to the other. You will probably have to trimmed off the adjoining ends to put them together. If rugs.com has the right sizing to the picture, a 4'11x 6 would be about perfect to double but you should measure to confirm.