Seriously, What Was I Thinking?

To put a brand spankin’ new WHITE spotted Ikea rug at the front door!  Yes, the rug is indoor-outdoor worthy, yes, it cleans up pretty well, yes it hardly cost a thing…but those white spots still didn’t stand a chance of staying white.

If you need it, here’s proof that walking in and out all summer on the rug, could only get worse during the rainy winter coming up.

So I started to think of ways to solve this problem in the fashion I do all my solving – over coffee with a paintbrush in hand.

If you think about it, how do they dye these things in the first place?  Usually a watery type substance.  If I used straight paint, I ran the risk of the spots being crunchy and hard.  I needed the rug to stay pliable and soft.  I started testing by using mostly water and just a blob of black craft paint.  See that little half circle at the top of the rug?

You could use any paint you have around btw.  I’m confident this would work on any type of rug, but if you have something heirloom-ish or expensive, think twice on this permanent solution, because once it dries there’s no going back.  If you panic after starting and change your mind, flush it with lots of water before it dries and sponge up with a white towel or paper towel, pressing, not rubbing.

I dried it with my trusty blow dryer to see how it faired. And…SUCCESS!  Keeping the paint super diluted worked like a dye would.  I rubbed in the solution with an old paintbrush.

People, there are lotsa dotsa on that little rug.  It took quite some time to tint those spots.

I decided to go ombre’ and start out darker where you come in to the house and hit the rug, adding more and more water to my mix in order to dilute the gray until the last bit of rug remained the original white.

And there you have it.  Cost: Zippo, Zilch, Nada since I used about a tablespoon of paint to a lot of H2O.

I thought of adding a word spelled out in dots in a different colour, but I couldn’t decide on the best way to execute that idea or if it felt too cutsie for me.

I’ll let you know how we did over the winter months when the wet footwear tramples all over the rug, but I’m guessing we’ll be just fine. And if not, I’ll just whip out the tools to colour in the rest of the rug. Splendid!

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