I gots a rug, y'all!
I bought it at Southeastern Salvage for TWENTY BUCKS!!!!! It was yellow, 5" x 8", and a good pile to paint.
Yes, paint. You can paint rugs! They just need to be low pile. I'll be sure to do a post featuring some of the lovely beauties floating out there in the blogosphere.
Here she is! Much brighter than the fug rug. I bought this baby over a month ago, mind you. It looks pretty good next to the gold framed mirror!
Here it is rolled out in the den. Note the dirty spots.. no wonder it was only $20. I wanted to paint a pattern on there, so I knew it would be covered up enough not to be visible. I decided to go with a hexagon pattern.
To start, I used my T-square from school to help keep a straight line. I started from the center.
Then I measured between the end and the center. Rather, a fourth of the way from the end.
I did the same from the other side.
Then I placed two strips of tape between each of those four sections, measuring them evenly.
And continued on the other side.
Then I found the center of the middle piece of tape, and stabbed a hole in it with my triangle. I wanted the angled lines to be centered around the middle of the rug.
I've used my 45 degree triangle on a ton of projects before, but I broke out the ol' 30-60-90 triangle for this puppy. Why? Hexagons have 6 angles, all equaling 60 degrees. HOW CONVENIENT!
I placed the triangle next to the dot in the center.
Then I folded a piece of tape in half and put it on one side of the hole.
Then I put a whole piece of tape over that and covered the hole. Why? I didn't want the pattern to be one inch over from the center.
Then I took my T square and laid it on top of the triangle to continue the angle and stuck the tape along side it.
Then I flipped it and continued the tape going the other direction.
I did the same thing for the diagonal going in the other direction.
And pulled the tape to the corners.
Phew! Not even close to being finished!
I used my "tools" to determine the shape of the hexagon. It was going to be way too big for my liking. Can you see the sides of it with the T square, tape measure, pencil, and triangle?
So what to do? Lay more horizontal lines down, of course! I don't think I even measured here, I just eyeballed it.
Time for the diagonals!
Of course I ran out of tape.
I got some more tape the next day! I finished the diagonals one way.
Then I laid the tape going the other direction. This is where I made an unfortunate mistake. See how all the yellow bits showing through are different sizes and shapes? Not good.
I didn't notice at first. It was quite late at night, so I began carving out the tape. I used an exacto knife. So long as I barely cut the tape, it didn't cut the carpet fibers.
"Don't start cutting!" Diesel says.
Too late!!!!! The first hexagon looked nice though!
"Oh nos, I can't watch."
They started getting all caddy wompus shaped..
So I put the tape back down. I also had to pull up nearly all of the diagonal pieces (the last set put down going the same direction).
When I laid the second set of diagonals, I failed to cross over the point where the horizontal and first set of diagonal tape intersected. Does that make sense???
Of course I ran out of tape again and had to use some leftover from a past paint project. See how the yellow bits are now mostly the same size (minus the middle right there where I still needed to add a few pieces)??
Time to cut again! The shapes looked so much better this go around.
They aren't exactly the same size, but that was fine with me. Cotton was fine with it too.
So much tape!!!!!!
Beauti-mous!!!!!
Time to paint! I brought it to the carport, just in case it bled through the back.
I used my sponge brush to dab it onto the rug. I used my leftover white paint from the staircase project.
And this was as far as I got for a loooooong time. It rained for about 4 days straight in Bham. Then I went to Auburn a couple weekends, then Thanksgiving travels, THEN I found the FUG RUG (woof), and didn't even give this rug a second thought.
Until this past weekend! I brought the ol' gal out to the driveway and continued painting her.
It took forever to dry. I finished around 4pm, and it was still wet around 1am when I went outside to check it.
I brought it to the yard the next day, and....
spray painted it. Imagine that. Can I get through one project without spray painting?!?
It needed one more coat, and I didn't want to take 2 hours dabbing paint back on it, so I used some flat white spray paint to go over each shape.
I was too excited to take tape removal pics! Here she is inside!!!!
With the stools! Not too shabby, eh?? Not the brightest either, but for twenty bucks and leftover paint, I can't complain!
EEEEEE!!
A lot of the bloggies I read said to sand the painted areas very lightly to loosen up the fibers (supposedly it doesn't remove much of the paint). I didn't do that (the step skipper strikes again). It doesn't feel that bad though! It's a wee bit stiff, but I'm hoping that will loosen up over time. And you're just suppose to vacuum like normal. I'll update everyone on the condition of everything in a few weeks!
I lubs it!
Updated pictures from my new camera!
I'm happy to report it has held up nicely! It only takes vacuuming to clean it! Success!
