How to Make Your Own Throw Rugs
28 November
We are back at the rental cottage in this post.
We did have to take a break from the kitchen and put a door on the bathroom since we had Thanksgiving there and there was no door 😂
We created a rolling door with barn door hardware. I'll be sharing that post soon, but in today's post, we are looking at one of our recent kitchen projects.
We made our own custom runner for the kitchen with some vintage carpet! Read on to see how we did it.
How to Make Your Own Throw Rugs
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These are the supplies we used to make our rug:
Supplies
- A piece of vintage wall-to-wall carpet
- Rug backing fabric
- DIY Rug binding
- Spray adhesive
- Hot glue gun
We just happened to find some vintage wall-to-wall carpet one day, it wasn't something we were specifically looking for. My daughter and I stopped at an estate sale one day over the summer, they had quite a bit of vintage stuff at this sale.
We went down to the unfinished basement and there wasn't much down there. It was dark and dingy but when I looked down at the floor we were walking on, I realized we were on a piece of old wall-to-wall carpet. Vintage 1960's or 70's flower power carpet! It was not "installed," it was just lying on the floor. It was a piece that measured probably about 12' x 5'.
I pointed it out to my daughter and she exclaimed, "Oh! I love it!" so I said, "Well, it is an estate sale, let's see if we can get it. I found someone who was working the sale and asked him how much they wanted. "THAT old stuff?" he said, "Five bucks" SOLD!
As we were clearing all the stuff off of it (tables and boxes), he said "Can I ask you a question?... WHY?!" He clearly couldn't wrap his head around why on earth we wanted this dirty old carpet. I just said, "Oh my daughter is into vintage and we want to use some of it in her new house." He seemed to be on board so we rolled it up and off we went with it!
We drove it straight over to the car wash! It was the perfect way to clean this old carpet up! Here's a little video clip of that.
We decided to make a runner for the kitchen with some of it so we cut a piece the right size and then scraped the disintegrating old backing off it.
Can you see why she loved it or do you hate it? Personally, I love it too but I know it's not for everyone 😊
We used Gorilla brand heavy-duty spray adhesive (I swear by anything Gorilla brand!) and non-slip backing fabric for rug making.
This is the same backing fabric my daughter uses for the tufted rugs that she makes.
.jpg "adding new rug backing")
If you do this project, make sure that you do this outside. It's getting a little cold outside so we did it in the garage on big tarps.
Then we took it inside to finish. We used self-adhesive carpet and area rug binding. The stuff I have linked in the supply list comes in 22 colors and we chose honey mustard for this rug.
It was pretty easy. You just peel off the backing and it has about a 3" wide area that goes underneath the rug and the edge of your rug butts up against the binding piece.
Then you use hot glue to seal up the edge where the binding and the carpet meet.
And voila, you have a custom throw rug!
.jpg "finished DIY throw rug")
There are some cons... this isn't a rug that you can just toss in the washing machine. It will have to be spot-cleaned and I suppose at some point the binding may need to be replaced... I'm not sure yet, we'll have to see.
.jpg "You can make your own custom throw rugs")
We have plenty of the vintage carpeting left and I think we have enough of the binding tape to make a smaller one.
.jpg "custom DIY throw rug")
But we are very happy with how it turned out!
.jpg "how to make DIY throw rugs from vintage carpeting")
Here is our cost breakdown (Note: we did not use all of our supplies so I'm estimating the price of the portions we did use):
Vintage carpeting, $5, and we used about one dollar's worth - $1.00
Self-adhesive binding tape - about $33.00
Rug backing - about $9.00
Spray adhesive - $12.84 (we only used a tiny bit of the can though)
Glue sticks, we already had them and we used about two - free
Total approximately $55
This is kind of expensive but we have a really cool, genuine vintage, custom-made rug so we are ok with it. 😄 I think if you were to find a vintage one that you wanted to buy, it would probably be at least that much!
If I could find some less expensive binding tape it would be much better. We also didn't use all the spray adhesive but I don't even know how to figure that cost out.
I hope you enjoyed this post. What do you think, is this something you'd try?
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Posted by: Tania | Little Vintage Cottage
at 28 November
Tag:
DIY & Crafts
I think you two ladies knocked this out of the park! It's is the 70's for sure. There was the new vynal floor covering in colors and patterns very close to this. Avacado green would be the other color choice...we bought our first new house and I picked avocado green for so much of it. I think the gold was Harvest gold??? I wouldn't even add in the adhesive to the total. And a side note....those new Kenmore avocado green appliances lasted for a very long time and survived many moves. So much fun to see someone reliving those colors and patterns that were new and much in demand back in the day. Your blog is much fun. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Dee! My daughter was born in the wrong era for sure, she loves all that avocado green, harvest gold, and all the fun patterns!
DeleteWell, I LOVE it and I think you two are very smart. I never thought of the car wash but that's basically how commercial carpet cleaners do it. You did a very professional job of making it too. I know if you got this from like-Anthropology it would cost 3-4 times what you spent making it. This looks so right in the kitchen and I would like to see more of it in your house. Good job Ladies!!!
ReplyDeleteThat throw rug is super cute. I love the funky 70s floral pattern!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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