Floor Rug From a Window Blind

This water damaged blind was almost as mangy as the window that it covered. Fortunately we replaced the window and I was left with this. I suppose you could also reimagine it as fire kindling but as it happens we need rugs, plenty of them. And since there was some leftover paint, I thought I'd experiment a bit and see of would work as a rug. It turned out surprisingly well.

Cutting the frame off with a box-cutter was easy. In fact, once it was off I had to be really careful that the rest of the slats would not unravel too.

I thinned some white external PVA paint with water and gave the blind a whitewash with a paintbrush. At first I was concerned that the paint would clump in the rope weave but it turns out that it repels it. The other concern was that the water stains would show through but happily they didn’t.

Getting the right ratio between paint and water was a bit of a thumb suck and I ended up going over everything with a bit more paint added to the mix. You also have to wait for everything to dry properly before you get a real idea of how thick or even the whitewash is.

With everything dry, there was a bit more trimming to do.

Thick, decorative duct tape is a perfect solution for edging. I cut a manageable strip and put half of it (up to the mid-point of the tape when lain horizontally) beneath the blind. Duct tape can be really irritating to fold with but this particular one behaved quite nicely.

Instead of working from the back, you could start from the top and stick the tape then fold it over to the back side as is done below. Use a row of bamboo as a guide.

Continue with more strips, overlapping the pieces slightly and ensuring that they match up in width. Do this to at least all the sides that have raw edges, if not all four sides.

And that, folks, is all there is to it! The rug is ready to be used. If you were concerned about it slipping, you could add some non-slip dots.