After posting about my hunt for rug inspiration last week, I just could not get that zebra rug out of my mind.

Stacey Costello Design

The very day that I posted this picture, Jenni Pulos was on the Nate Berkus show talking about how animal prints are a regret-proof trend. I was sold.

I loved the brown and ivory version from Ballard Designs, but an 8×10 sells for $1399! Too rich for my blood.

Ballard Designs

Then I received this comment from my lovely Aunt Julie:

I about fell out of my chair. I’m pretty much obsessed with the wide and varied uses of canvas dropcloths. Not only do I have one draped over the ugliest seventies disco couch you ever saw in my dining room, I’ve had ideas swimming in my head for months to use dropcloths for upholstery, curtains, pillows, etc. I love the texture, the color, and the cost. But a rug? It had to be too good to be true. I imagined it slipping all over the floor, getting sucked into the vacuum cleaner, or just becoming one giant cat toy. I began brainstorming ways to make the fabric heftier. As I often do in moments like this, I turned to Google.  A search for “dropcloth rug” turned up articles from Martha Stewart, Apartment Therapy, Curbly…what, have I been living under a rug rock? How is that I’ve never heard of this fabulous, amazing thing called a floorcloth?

I learned that floorcloths date to the 17th century and involve heavy fabric, a painted design, and some sort of sealant. The result is a durable floor cover well-suited to hard surfaces (like wood) and resistant to staining. I decided to give it a shot, and this is what I ended up with:

I LOVE it! And it only cost about $150! Here’s how I did it:

I read a ton of tutorials, and they all said basically the same thing:

1. stretch the canvas on a wooden frame
2. coat front and back with some sort of sealant (polycrylic, shellac, etc.)
3. paint your design on the front
4. cover the design with a few coats of your sealant
5. cut the finished product from the frame and hem the edges with adhesive

Since I wanted an ultra-big floorcloth but wasn’t extremely concerned about the exact size or razor-straight edges, I decided right off the bat to skip the wood frame. Building a frame big enough for this project would have been too costly and I hate woodworking.

I already had some brown porch and floor paint on hand, so I headed to Lowe’s to gather the rest of my supplies:

• A 9×12 canvas dropcloth, about $25
• Foam brushes in assorted sizes, about $5
• Rug tape, about $5
• Huge plastic tarp, about $2

I forgot to get a sealant (a real forehead-slapping moment), so I went back and perused my options. I ultimately decided to go with shellac because A) it’s the more traditional product, B) it’s made from natural materials, and C) it was the cheapest (which was a good thing, as I ended up needing a lot of shellac). One quart said that it would cover 100-150 square feet so I got two quarts, figuring that would be enough to cover front and back.

I spread my tarp and my dropcloth out on our back deck.

If you look closely you can see that not only did my dropcloth have a seam running right down the middle, but the two pieces were actually slightly different in color! I decided not to stress about it and get shellac-ing.

And this is where I started to wonder if this was going to be a giant money-suck. This is how far one quart of shellac got me. I ended up using about two gallons total just to coat the front side (about $100 total spent on shellac). I also learned that brushes (foam or bristle) did not work well to spread the shellac efficiently. I had the best results with a sponge-like staining pad. Wear gloves if you don’t want your hands to be gross like mine were for a few days.

I decided to skip shellac-ing the back side for now and move on to creating my stripes. I practiced drawing zebra stripes with paper and pencil:

Then I used a pencil to freehand them onto my canvas. I tried to keep the lines really organic and imperfect. I stayed on my feet and moved quickly so I could more easily keep the overall scale consistent. Next, I started filling in the stripes with brown porch and floor paint (Churchill Hotel Brown by Valspar, left behind by the sellers of our house).

If you look closely you can see my pencil lines. I kept painting, and painting, and painting, every spare moment I got. Until I had this:

Sweet victory! I had about half a gallon of shellac left, but I was so ready to be done with this baby that I didn’t use it. I figured the porch and floor paint is designed to stand up to wear and tear and doesn’t need to be sealed.

I let my new exotic friend dry in the sun for a while before moving her to her new home in the living room. And I can attest that this would definitely make an outstanding exterior rug, as a heavy rainstorm came through when  I was only partway through painting the stripes. The water just sort of sat on top before drying up. No sogginess whatsoever.

And now our living room is no longer rug-less! I would describe the texture as pleasantly coarse. It’s actually kind of hide-like. There are some wrinkles and creases and I’m waiting to see if those come out on their own. If not, I may go back and shellac the backside. I also ended up not needing the rug tape–this thing doesn’t slip or slide at all! I haven’t vacuumed it yet, but it’s so stiff that I can’t imagine we’ll have a problem.

If I ever tire of the zebra stripes, I can paint right over them with a new design. It took me a day or so to get over the shock of the stripes in here, but now I’m totally digging it. It adds such a fun, graphic touch to the room!

Thanks for the inspiration, Aunt Julie, and to everyone else who gave tips for my rug dilemma!

P.S. Read the original post about my yearning for a rug here. To see where all the other stuff in our living room came from, check out the post about the room here. To see pictures of the rest of our little bungalow, visit our House Tour page.

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