Patio Upgrades: Painted Rug

With Colton's outdoor birthday party (fingers crossed for good weather) just a couple of days away, I've been busy working on improving our patio.  One of the major areas to be addressed was our nasty patio rug.  Well, nasty no more, folks.  Take a look:

And in case the post title didn't give it away, that beauty actually looked like this just last week.

Not only did the rug not meet our patio color scheme, it was also pretty worn down and dirty.  Sure, purchasing a new rug would have been easy, but it just wasn't in the budget.  Plus, in my quick searches online, I had yet to find something that I really loved.  So I decided to solve my problem in my favorite way: paint!

First, I covered the thing in a few coats of white paint.  Honestly, it could have probably used a fourth, but I'm a little lazy/impatient when it comes to projects.  I was out of paint and didn't want to take the time to go get more or have to wait, so I just went with it!  Next, I taped off some random stripes.  I had intended to do some skinny ones as well, but I didn't have enough of the thinner painter's tape.  Remember I'm lazy/impatient, so again I just went with it!

I then painted a couple coats of pink paint on top, let it dry, and ripped off the tape!  Let me preface this, though, by saying if you intend to conquer your own rug painting project, painting a rug is no joke!  I thought this would be quick and easy, but I found myself really having to put some muscle behind my roller to get as much paint coverage as possible!  It was tough work...not to mention, it took a lot more paint than I had figured.  Again, I probably could/should have done another coat of the pink, but I was out (I had bought a quart), and remember I'm lazy/impatient, so once again, I just went with it!!!  

To finish off the rug, I sprayed it with a couple of coats of water sealer.  Luckily, our patio is covered, so it won't be exposed to too much rain or anything, but I figured it made more sense to protect my hard work!

And in other patio news, we made some big progress late last night (hence the poor lighting in the picture):

Yep folks, that's a nice little tv on our back patio.  Considering Josh is definitely the more tech-excited one out of the two of us, it's a little odd that I've been hounding him for the past three years to put a tv out there.  But the space is just perfect for it, and I finally convinced him.  Obviously we have to work to hide the wires and stuff, but it's up, it's functional, and it looks better than the shelf that was previously there...I'll have to take a picture in the daylight to prove it to you!

So there we have it...our improved patio!  I'm still on the hunt to find some new end tables, but other than that, I would say this makeover is dones-o!