We Painted a Rug

I’ve been wanting a new rug for the house for a while. A long while. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be in our budget any time soon, no matter how many times I make my husband drive me to Ikea and moon over rugs hoping he’ll agree that £160 is a bargain for the rug of my dreams. Hasn’t worked yet. This leaves me with the following options:

1. Get by without  a rug – doable, but sad

2. Secretly buy a rug and hope Terry doesn’t notice – not likely

3. Paint the existing rug we have into a rug that I like – lightbulb!

I found this dream living room on Apartment Therapy:

 

How gorgeous is that rug???

Unfortunately, that rug looks like it costs quite a bit of money. However, I soon spotted this tutorial on how to paint a rug and an idea for a DIY project was born. We had a white Ikea rug that we’d bought a few years previously and had put up when we got a black cat. We went to Home Base and bought a basic gray house paint in Urbanite gray and off we went.

First things first – Terry broke out the measuring tape and set off making those zig zags.

Terry using his mad measuring skills to mark out the pattern

Not long after, I began painting the pattern onto the rug. The first coat seemed a bit patchy, so we applied a second coat just to be safe.

While Terry continued to mark out the pattern, I began painting

All done – just need to wait for the paint to dry

Like any DIY project, we began with a lot of enthusiasm but halfway through wondered why on earth we didn’t just save up the money to buy a stupid rug in the first place. This is that point:

Halfway there….

This morning when we woke up, we pulled off the tape and were delighted to find this supercool rug in our living room!

After – designer rug or DIY?

In the words of This Little Miggy:

$30 rug, $6 in paint,  3.5 hours and a little elbow grease?

I’m sorry, but you just can’t beat that with a stick.