Kitchen counters and shelves can’t be easily replaced. Lights are expensive, and stoves are astronomical. What if I tell you that you can fix one thing fairly easily; DIY rug for kitchen floor. They’re easy and give a fresh look to your kitchen and easy on the pocket!
It’s exhausting to look at the same thing over and over again. Left side- same shelves, right side- same stove, up- same lights, down- same mats. When you spend that much time in the same room over and over again you’re bound to feel restless looking at the same thing, but who has the money to splurge over new things every few days right?
There are three ways I can help you freshen up your kitchen; get scraps of new mats and put together something that’s aesthetic and cheap, use up what you have from stuff lying around, and lastly, revamp your old mats.
Hold on tight because this will blow you away!
Scrapes and Pieces – Get Creative!
You have a fairly big area to cover in the kitchen but everything that’s remotely bigger than foot size in the shop is too expensive? Easy solution.
Take two, make it one!
Instead of splurging on large mats that can cover your entire kitchen, get one or two small rugs of the same type (cheaper, I assure you), and tape together with carpet seaming tape. You have a large mat for your kitchen and you didn’t burn a hole in your pocket- a sure victory!
Carpet store scraps
Another thing you can do if you’re going for a more chaotic aesthetic, or rustic look, is going to carpet shops and ask them for small-sized sample pieces- they might give it to you for free or you might have to cough up a handful of pennies for it.
Go home, use vinyl or old mats as a base. You can even use yoga mats, or old anti-fatigue kitchen mats you have lying around as base. If you want, a carpet runner is easily available at the store as well!
Arrange your scraps on the base- go crazy, go wild! Make patterns, play with the colors. When you finalize your design, squirt some glue on the underside of your fabric and stick it to your base. Leave it to dry for a bit and voila you have a new kitchen mat!
Cheap- Make it Gold!
Customize! Customize! Customize! Want a patterned rug but the only thing that’s falling in your budget is the plain one? No problem- go home, take out that fabric paint you have stored away, or make a quick detour and buy yourself some depending on what color scheme you’re going for.
Sketch out the design you want for your rug and paint it in! If you’re scared of ruining your canvas, then just use paper tape as your guide and make a stencil out of it!
The fabric paint will dry fairly quickly and then you’ll have a beautiful patterned rug at the price of a plain one! You can use this technique to revamp old ones as well!
Spring Cleaning- The Useful Way !
You’ve heard of people emptying they’re cupboards and getting rid of all the things they don’t use anymore- this is the same except you won’t be throwing anything away!
Cork Style
Your sink is always wet, and the floor around it is always slippery. Whenever you go in and step on the cloth mat you have there, it feels gross- seems familiar? We have an easy solution which will cost you virtually nothing!
Get yourself a shelf liner (easily available on Amazon, and perfect for this), a couple of wine corks, depending on how large your mat is, and some hot glue. Now assemble!
Cut out your shelf liner depending on the size you want it. Steam your corks for a few minutes to make them easy to cut then slice along the middle. Arrange your corks, flat side down, on the mat so that there’s no space left between them. Once arranged, all you need to do now is glue them!
Fluffy Balls- who doesn’t love them?
Have you seen those movies where there are those pretty round mats made up of fluffy balls, and your heart just says ‘I want it’ really loudly? Well, there’s no reason why you can’t have it!
All you need is a fishing line (available at any hardware store and crazy cheap), some 2cm felt balls, and a needle to help you quicken the process.
Now all you need to do is thread the fishing line through the felt balls until you have a long line of fluffy balls! Now you just need to wrap it around and once you’ve received the desired width for the mat, just glue the circles together!
Rope and jute- throw in a little rustic!
Have you ever spent hours on Pinterest wishing you could afford to live the rustic aesthetic life? It’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone who hasn’t done that. A huge trend in the rustic aesthetic theme is the use of rope and jute- and good news for you because you can use them to make mats as well!
This calls for recycling- just take your old kitchen mat that you’re tired of looking at, run to the hardware store and buy yourself as much rope as you need (go over, instead of under), and some strong glue.
Measure the length of the mat and cut your rope according to that. Now all you need to do is stick your pieces of rope side by side and make sure there’s so space between the pieces. Congratulations, you’ve made yourself a cute and rustic mat which is easy on the pocket, and beautiful to look at!
So many ways- what are you waiting for?
One thing we have established is that brightening up your kitchen with just kitchen mats costs next to nothing, and can make a huge difference! If you have enough spare change then look at what ready-made mats you can buy if you don’t want to go through the effort of DIYing. We have articles that can help you narrow down your search.a
That being said, DIYing these things brings a unique kind of charm and joy in every house, so don’t be shy and take the leap!