Paint Your Own Rug

I love things that are free. Who doesn’t? In my world free is a word that makes my insides do a happy dance. Often times I will bring home things that were free just because they were “free”. My husband is not super excited about this tendency of mine to collect and bring into our home free things that I find. One time I brought a couch home from bulk trash. (where people put things they don’t want in front of their house for garbage pick up) In my defense I was going to recover that couch, it had a cool shape. My husband insisted I take that thing out to the curb before he even got home from work! In his defense, he was probably right and it was most likely full of germs and perhaps even unclassified diseases. My husband is a bit of a germ-a-phobe. Gotta love him!

But I digress, back to the rug. It was, as you have now probably surmised, FREE! I got it at a garage sale for FREE and it was even brand new with the tags on it! SCORE! It was however, just a plain tan brown and I am working on adding color into my home. I have seen other people paint rugs and decided to give it a go. It actually went really well, was easy, fun and I already had all the supplies on hand.

1) I painted the rug white, it took A LOT of paint. The rug has a course, bumpy braided texture and it soaked the paint right up. It took 2 coats and over an hour to paint, but totally worth the time and effort.

It was fun painting something that you wouldn’t normally paint. It almost felt rebellious, like I was doing something I shouldn’t be. Yes I lead a boring life of rule following, obviously, because painting a rug feels like an act of rebellion. Oh my, sometimes I wonder what life has come to! 🙂

2) I cut flourishes and flowers out of vinyl on my Silhouette and used the negative space as my stencil. Dabbing the paint on with the stencil brush I arranged and layered them to my liking.

3) After it was all dry I took my electric sander to the top, just to rough it up a bit, can’t have things looking too perfect. Then the dirt shows up too quickly!

I like the rug, a lot, my laundry room does need a serious makeover and this rug is the perfect inspiration for the space. Someday I will get to decorating the rest of the room. Hopefully sooner than later right?

Here is a pic of the finished rug in the actual laundry room. What you don’t see is the HUGE pile of unwashed, stinky clothes sitting in the hall because I threw them there in order to take this picture.

Now that is real life people!

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