Hand Painted Floor Mat- Laundry Room Revamp Part 2

I recently revamped my laundry/craft room and decided to do two separate postings on the project. Part 1 is the revamp project itself that can be found by clicking here. This posting is Part 2 and is the tutorial for the painted subway sign floor mat that I did for the laundry/craft room.

The inspiration for my painted floor mat came straight from the super creative Sarah from the fabulous blog Sarah Wandering. For weeks, I searched everywhere for a fun and inexpensive rug for my laundry/craft room. I almost gave up until I stumbled across an amazing and gorgeous floor mat painted by Sarah and I was instantly inspired and ran as fast as I could to Home Depot for my mat! Sarah brilliantly turned an interlocking floor mat into a work of art:












Sarah did an amazing job with her free hand painting on her mat. The colors and design are just beautiful and I can't get over the sheer brilliance of painting on these inexpensive interlocking mats. Oh my, the possibilities are endless!

With Sarah's inspirational post and instructions, I took the project in a slightly different direction and did not free hand paint, but rather I spray painted foam letters to the mat and then removed them after they dried. Sarah used acrylic paints, which she details her technique in her tutorial here.

The first thing I did was locate the mats that would work for my space. I found these large interlocking floor mats at Home Depot for $16.00, which includes a package of four large squares. My runner ended measuring 6'x 2'.2" and I used three of the four squares:





Just like Sarah did, I turned my mat over and put the pieces together as a runner (the bottom side is foam and does not have a sealant on it and can accept paint- unlike the top side of the mat). I panicked because the last side of the puzzle piece wouldn't work as a runner until I switched out two of the side puzzle pieces and the runner finally came together (just play with it and try ALL of the pieces).





Next, I primed the runner with a spray plastic primer in white. I also sprayed the sides. I thoroughly sprayed the runner once with primer:







I then used a yard stick to draw straight lines in pencil for me to place my foam sticker letters for my subway art. I used the EVA block foam letters:








After I placed my foam letters on the mat where I wanted them, my fabulous and beautiful assistant Bella, helped me by using a wallpaper seam roller to roll over the letters to make sure they were completely attached around each letter edge.












Next, I spray painted the mat and letters with an all-purpose matte black spray paint. I sprayed around the runner evenly until I no longer saw the white primer. I was careful to evenly and thinly spray and wait a few minutes not to saturate.






Next, my assistant helped me remove the letter stickers after letting the mat partially dry for about an hour. Unfortunately, after removing only a couple of letters, my assistant got sidetracked:





This is what the mat looked like after we removed the letters:





I used a Testors Enamel Paint Pen in red to fill in the numbers for a slight touch of red.






This project was so easy and fun to do. I can't wait to try another mat somewhere else in the house. The next time I think I will attempt to free hand with acrylics like Sarah did. Speaking of which, thank you so much Sarah for your inspiration and sharing this fabulous idea!

Thank you for your sweet emails, comments and notes! I so appreciate your feedback!

Cheers!



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