One thing about painting a rug: it's hard. There's no real clear instructions online, it seems that everyone who does it uses a different kind of paint, a different technique, so I mostly winged it (wung it? I dunno). First, I used painter's tape and cardstock to make my pattern, then I used a roller to roll on my first coat of just basic latex paint and a very expensive fabric medium. That first, totally uncovered first coat took the WHOLE STINKIN' QUART of paint I bought. So, out I ran, paint swatch in hand, to get another gallon. I was out of fabric medium and didn't want to bother with it anymore anyway, so on went another coat, and it was looking pretty good. The next morning, there was more white than grey showing, I guess most of the paint seeped in as it dried, so on when another coat. Yup, over a gallon of paint total to paint a 5x8 rug. Eeesh. It was also quite a bit more expensive than I had anticipated. Double eeesh. Anyway, this is the color I picked:
While we were at the hardware store picking up supplies, we also got some stuff to paint a few frames for my wall grouping. That was a much easier project. This is how it turned out:
Unfortunately, though I liked how the grouping turned out and I also liked the way the rug turned out, once I put them in the room, it looked weird altogether. You can't see it, but the wall the tv was on turned into a black hole of blah against my wall, and the corner right next to it was simply awfully boring. I was devastated. Yes, I realize that was an overreaction, but it's true, so much hard work just for it not to come together the way it was in my head, it was very hard for me. So mom and I spent days rearranging the furniture. The above picture was actually the second or third move. Originally, the couch was on the wall to the left and the tv was on the right, and there was a chair under the grouping. Every time we moved the tv was a bit deal, too, a two hour long project of unplugging and rewiring. Anyway, we liked this okay, but the couch was not parallel with the tv, so Cam hated it. So, we tried this:
The chair was pretty much too small for the space and the tv was still way too far from the tv and there was still all that weird boring corner space on both sides, but the rug looked better, I thought.
Finally, after days of moving (very heavy) furniture around, we finally came up with this:
You may think to yourself, "why didn't Carly think of using the couch to split up that huge space BEFORE?" Well, I did, but Cam specifically said he didn't want the couch in the middle of the room. But since he was so weird about watching tv at an angle, we decided this was going to have to be it. I decided to take down that middle picture in the grouping and use the tv as part of it instead.
Out mom and I went again, shopping, to pick up a tv wall mount. Did I mention this living room setting up was quite a bit more expensive than I had anticipated? Also more time consuming...rearranging that wall took all afternoon. But I'm pretty happy with the end result:
The good news is that even though Cam initially did not want the couch in the middle of the room, once we did it, he loved it. He also liked that we could sit a comfortable distance from the tv and not at an angle. I would've just scrapped the tv after the first failure, but I guess that's the difference between men and women.
The end result is: I have a cute-enough living room. It's cuter in person, trust me. I just need to make some friends here so there's someone else besides me and mine to enjoy it.
Now, does anyone have any brilliant ideas of how to hide those cords without cutting holes in the wall?
