50 Basement Progress: A Painted Playroom Rug!

What did you do last Saturday night?  Hit up the clubs?  A fun filled family game night?  A night out with the best friend or romantic date with your other half?

Any guesses what I did last Saturday night?

Here is how a conversation went with my mom when she called me...

Mom:  "Hi J.P. {that's the childhood nickname my mom still calls me}  Whatcha doin'?"

Me:  "Oh, just painting a rug..."

Mom:  "What!?"

Me:  "Yeah, I ran out of walls to paint, so I decided I would paint a rug."

Mom:  "Oh my, you really have gone off the deep end haven't you?"

Me:  "Totally!"

Thanks to Pinterest and my fabulous blogging peeps, I took the rug painting plunge.  It's one of those projects that I am unsure if I would have ever come up with on my own {although, I do paint just about everything else, so it was probably inevitable that I would eventually paint a rug too}.

And for those thinking I am nuts, there is no arguing the amount of money you save by doing it.

Follow me on Pinterest?  You may have noticed I have been scouring for playroom rugs.  And they were all in the $200+ price range for the size we needed.  Seems like a theme when it comes to finding any great rug.  Expensive!

This one from Shades of Light was one of my favorites.  It seemed inexpensive, beachy and had no where for LEGOS to hide, meaning my feat should be safe from surprises.

So, thanks to some tutorials found around blog land, I replicated {here is a great tutorial and the one I followed almost to a T}

I started out with the 6x8 ERSLEV rug from IKEA, that rang in at just $60!  That's a lot of rug for the price.  Couldn't find one that size for less no matter how hard I tried.

Remember, this is how I spent my Saturday night, so the pics are a little on the bad lighting side... sorry.

We measured 10" stripes to get them to fit perfectly along the entire rug and taped them off with our beloved Frog Tape:

Then, I just rolled.  I used the rest of the quart of Glidden's Blue Lagoon that I had also used for the kid's art display project.

It seemed to be covering really well, so we decided to pull the tape immediately while the paint was still wet, just like we would if we were painting walls {seem to get the crispest lines that way}.

The rug sucked up that paint like a sponge.  I ran out of paint with a stripe left....

Lucky for me, my neighbor works at Home Depot and picked up another quart for me the following day so I could finish off that last stripe without waiting for too long.  But here is where I made my next mistake {mistake one being not having enough paint}.  I could still see some small spots with white showing through so I went back with a paint brush to try and fill in those spots.  Looked good when wet.  Was SO disappointed to see those spots didn't dry the same as the rolled stripe.  You could really notice where I touched up.  {sorry, too mad to take a photo of my goof}.

So, I re-taped and re-rolled my second coat to even it all back out.  And ran out of paint again, on my very last stripe {as I was finishing the stripe, but every last bit of paint from both quarts was used}.

Therefore, if you are going to do this project, I would recommend two coats right away, and a gallon of paint to be safe.

Then, it's time to smile BIG when it's all done and dry!!

The painted stripes don't look too painted, even up close.  It looks pretty good overall!  And I am sure as it gets vacuumed and played on, that paint will soften up a bit more...

And I love that the little bins with casters can roll around smoothly and that LEGOS won't get lost!

Rug before and after?

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Not bad for around $80 after the rug and two quarts of paint!  That's a savings of $130 from the cheapest option I found.  I like to see numbers like that!

Anyone else been painting rugs lately?  What's the strangest thing you have painted?  Or something you have done recently that was inspired by blog land?

Pssst.... we have since switched things up a bit, check it out here.