From $3 IKEA floor mat to flippin' fabulous floor pouf.

Wanna know how a couple of these striped rugs

become this cushy piece of bum lovin'?

Well, sit down and relax.  Let me start from the beginning.

I happened upon these beauties a while back whilst browsing on West Elm's website. 

What a great {and fashionable} extra seating option, I thought. 

{I don't know how it is at your house, but when we get the whole fam together, it always seems like we are running out of seating.  Someone inevitably ends up sitting on the floor, or we end up redecorating by pulling chairs in from every room in the house.  That's all fine and good, family get togethers don't happen all that often, but I thought that next go around I'd make it easy on myself and get some floor poufs.  They are light, easy to move around and "totally in" right now.}  

If money were no option, I probably would have just bought them directly from West Elm.  But, since I do not have that luxury, I had to do the next best thing...knock 'em off. 

I don't know if I am just picky {or cheap...or both}, but I couldn't find any fabric that "spoke" to me.  I was hoping to have one of those "long lost lovers reunited moments", you know, where the fabric just appears-totally engulfed in angelic light and I'm so overcome with emotion that all I can do is crumble to the floor crying.  Anywho, it didn't happen.  So I just went home.  And that's when I saw these little babies hanging on my banister. 

No angelic light, no overflowing of emotion.  But hey, whatever. 

They are $3 rugs from IKEA.  I had bought three of them not really knowing what I'd do with them, but after looking at them, I realized that they would be an inexpensive and durable option.  So I totally ran with it...and hey whadaya know.  I love 'em...not fall on the floor and cry, love 'em, but almost.

All you need is:
mediocre sewing skills {by that I mean, the ablility to "fudge it" a little and sew in a straight
line}.
Three, $3 IKEA rugs

A Zipper {optional, but with five kids I needed my pouf cover to be removable/washable...this is where my fudging skills came in...didn't know how to sew in a zipper til I did it.  The zipper needs to be as close to the size of the opening as possible...my zipper was 22 inches.}
Filler {I found bean bag filler at K-Mart for $12.99 a bag.  You can use fiber fill, old car parts...whatever floats your boat, but I wanted my pouf to maintain its shape and be extra comfy for my keister.  I ended up using a little over one bag}.
And maybe some extra sewing needles since I broke three during the course of the project.

I started by cutting down one rug into two pieces.

One piece should measure 23in x 23in{or close to that, the widths of the rugs vary from 22 1/2 inches to 23 1/2 inches}, and the other piece should measure around 12in x 23in {again, it's super hard to be totally exact, because each rug is just slightly different in size}.

  
Cut down a second rug the exact same way.  You should now have 2- 23in x 23in pieces, and 2- 12in x 23in pieces.

Finally, cut your third rug down so that you have an additional 2- 12in x 23in pieces...for a grand total of 2- 23in x 23in pieces and 4- 12in x 23in pieces.


Now for the fun part...sewing.  I'll let the pictures do the talking, sound okay?

piece 6 is the second, 23in x 23in piece

once all six pieces are attached, you need to sew the corners.  The white arrows indicate where you should do this.

Here's what it should look like after the corners are sewed together.

Now you need to attach two sides of the bottom of the pouf.  The picture indicates where to do this.

Here's what it will look like after the two sides are sewn.  You should have only one side left unstitched now.
That opening is where your zipper will go...if you want one.  If you don't want a zipper closure, you would stitch this opening closed, leaving a small area open to allow for adding stuffing/filling.  You could then, either hand stitch or machine sew the opening closed after filling.

I realized after I'd made it to this point, that you want both edges hemmed so they have a nice, clean edge.  I lucked out, one of my edges was the selvage edge of the rug, but the other I had to hem under.

I turned the pouf ride side out, and slid one side of the zipper under one side of the opening.  I pinned it in place and sewed the length of the zipper.

Then I unzipped the zipper so that I could work with the other side.  I did the same as before, and slid the other side of the zipper under the other side of the opening, pinned and stitched the length of the zipper.


At this point, you could turn your pouf inside out and reinforce the zipper by stitching just above the top of the zipper, and just below the bottom of the zipper.  My zipper was just slightly shorter than the opening, so I had a little gap at one end that I needed to hem shut.  If you run into this same problem, it's no big deal.

Here's what the final product should look like.

And here's what it should look like after getting filled.

I ended up making two of these bad boys.  I spent $18 on 6 rugs, $39 on three bags of filler, and $5 on two zippers...for a grand total of $62 {or just over $30 for one pouf}.  The cheapest pouf I found on West Elm was $219.  That's a savings of $190.  Boo ya!  You could save a little more money by using a different filler, but I really wanted my poufs to maintain their shape and have a little firmness to them so I splurged and got the good stuff. 

 I can't wait to test 'em out tonight and catch up on a little T.V.

My "get er done" projects playlist

I don't know about you guys, but I love to have music blaring...in the car while I'm carting kids to and fro, at home when I'm cleaning and especially when I'm working on a project.  When I was younger I used to blare it while I studied.  I don't know, it has just always worked for me. 

Anywho, I love almost every genre of music...everything from Vivaldi to Justin Bieber. 

My latest project{s}-laundry room redo and my painted floors- were quite time intensive so I knew I needed to have some good working music on the ready.

Usually I like to mix it up, but I ended up listening to one band the entire time.  They totally motivated me and kept my "ADD" mind occupied, so I thought I'd share them with you. They are my new obsession...
YOUNG THE GIANT.

I included a little ear candy for your listening pleasure. 

I love their entire album {it's the perfect soundtrack for a long road trip too, methinks} but I only included a few of their songs.  MY BODY is my very most fave.  I like to think that it is all about cupcakes {or bacon}...totally relatable.

If any of you are having a hard time getting up the motivation to work on some of your looming projects, I highly recommend cranking up the tunes and bustin' a move, whilst bustin' out your project.  I suppose you can borrow these guys if you don't have a band of your own. :)

P.S. sorry if any of you came across the techno remix version of cough syrup.  I've since resolved the problem.

  

Painted Floors- A Tutorial

I thought I'd repost my painted floor tutorial from my Lovestitched feature, just in case some of you missed it.  It was a time consuming project, but I think my efforts paid off.  My floors look a million times better.  I really love how they turned out.  Read on if your curious to see how my floors when from pig sty, to totally fly.

Okay! How many of you out there have a room in your house with hideously unattractive floors? Sadly, I have a couple of them. Here’s number one on The World’s Fugliest Floors list.

A couple weeks ago, I finally decided I had had enough of the “life sucking” laundry room floors and I decided that I was going to do something about it. I considered my options.

Option 1- Actually try cleaning it…like really cleaning it, with a pressure washer and the works. Yuck! Seems like a lot of work and the floors would still be the same drab grey color…just a little cleaner {well, a lot cleaner}.

Option 2- Rip out the tile and replace it with something uber attractive {the David Beckham of all tiles is what I’m talking about}. I liked this option, but since I would most likely be going solo on this little project, I didn’t really think my delicate hands and back would appreciate all of the manual labor. Plus, this option would most likely make a significant dent in the ole pocket book.

Option 3- Paint over the existing tile. No chipping, chiseling, pressure washing needed. Done! My decision was made.

I had never painted over tile before, so right off the bat, I did a little research. I knew that regular latex paint would not stand up to the high traffic. So my thoughts turned to epoxy based paint…you know the stuff you use to coat garage floors?

Before you can start this project, it is important to get the work surface as clean and grime-free as possible. Then it needs to dry thoroughly.

Once this is done, you need to prep the floors by applying an appropriate primer. There are several types of primers on the market, but the lovely paint guy at “the depot” said this one would do the job.

I applied one coat

and after about an hour it was dry enough for me to apply a second coat.

{This is a fairly quick drying primer. It says right on the back that it should be dry enough for light traffic in about an hour, but I would just make sure that the surface is in fact dry before walking around on it. Just sayin’.}

After the second coat of primer was dry, I applied my first coat of paint.

I used a 1-part epoxy paint. 

I applied two coats of this white base paint.

Then I let the floors cure for several days before starting the next step…

taping

Honestly, the hardest part about the taping was coming up with a design. I spent a lot of time pondering the right pattern: chevron stripe, basic stripe, argyle. I finally settled on a “v” pattern that I just sort of "made up".

I measured out the center of the floor and taped a large “X”.

From there I simply began taping “V’s” in each of the four sections of the “X”.

I removed every other “v” to reveal a space inbetween.

{It goes against all I believe to be wasteful, so I reused the pieces of tape I removed from the inbetween spaces in order to cut down on tape usage}

Here it is…several roles of tape later. But isn’t she gorge? And she’s not even done yet.

For the second color, I chose a greyish-blue color…I believe it was called FOG.

This is after the first coat.

And this is after the second coat.

There was a little bleeding.

{No worries though. It’s nothing a little paint and Q-tip couldn’t fix}

And VOILA! Here she is in all her striped glory.

And a little close up. See how well the Q-tip worked.

Here’s a before and after…just so you can remember the hideousness from whence she came. David Beckham hotness achieved…I think so.

I was able to complete this project for around $100. Not too shabby for a flippin’ awesome floor. Here’s the breakdown: Gripper Primer $23, 2 gallons of Behr brand epoxy paint @ $30 each, 2 roles of painters tape @ $7 each}.

Knock Off Decor Feature and a "Light Bulb"moment.

Howdy peeps!

Becky over at knock-off decor is currently featuring my industrial metal letters that I made for my laundry room revamp. {Thanks lady!}

I've made it pretty clear that I am a sucker for a good knock off.  And if you are into knocking off ridiculously over priced home decor as well, I would highly suggest hopping over to her place and taking a look around.  It's amazing to see what people can do with a little ingenuity.

And in other news, I have been dreaming of covering every thing I see in contact paper.  It's gotta stop.  I'm worried that pretty soon I'll be living in a house entirely coated in plastic.  But that said, I love my "wood" lamp shade.  I failed to mention in my post about it how it looked with the light on.  My answer to that is  "FLIPPIN' AWESOME"! 

It looks even better with the lamp turned on.  My only advice is to take extra care when trimming off the excess contact paper.  You can see if it's uneven through the shade when the lamp is on.  After I had adhered my c.p., I just took a razor blade and trimmed all the excess off along the support rings at the top and bottom.  Easy, peasy.