Work to de done
The plan when we moved in and I saw our ugly patio made up of broken slabs of stone, was to get rid of it somehow. I painted the silver alloy fence at the end of the garden next to the beach along with all the garden walls using Bedec Multi Surface paint in Matt Black. This massively improved the look of the back garden, but I just couldn’t get past the horrible dark grey ugly tarmac where we spent most of the summer entertaining friends and family, having dinners and lounging on the outdoor sofas. So, I decided to paint the whole thing and create a stencilled outdoor rug , it is HUGE and wraps around the entire house but my optimistic brain told me ten litres of the amazing Bedec outdoor paint would SURELY do it!
Decisions, decisions
Having overdone the black a little and loving a monochrome look, I decided to go for a winter white colour and off I went. I painted and painted for hours, noticing that the tarmac literally ATE the paint and you couldn’t just brush stroke it on like you would a flat surface, I had to bristle brush it it like someone stencilling a mural might do….5 litres in and several hand blisters later I realised that not only would ten litres (hundreds of pounds of paint!) not cover it, but I’d managed to now cover about 3 of the 20m squared that I had to cover, so I had to change tack!
Change of plan
I ended up thinking a section would be better and had the idea to turn it into a feature, like a rug would be in your living room instead, not fancying another spend of triple what I’d already bought, this seemed like the sensible solution! I ruled off both ends with masking tape and filled in the white paint neatly to the edges (another week or so!) then I found a stencil called Volga by Stencilogy on Etsy, a wallpaper mural, that I thought would be pretty great on my plain white rug. I’ve always loved a herringbone shape and we have tiles like that and parquet flooring inside so thought it would echo that quite nicely.
Taking shape
I got to work when it arrived painting in the black Bedec weatherproof paint – you can literally paint anything with this stuff!! I laid the stencil down and repeated the pattern overlapping itself over a hundred times to cover the whole rug surface, at that point it really began to look like a real rug so I hand painted on some little black tassels at each end, and there you have it.
A great result!
I love spending time out there now, and the end of that week when I finished Greg had his 40th birthday party outside over that whole area to christen it, and it has worn so well. That was the beginning of the summer and it looks just as good now in winter after many many storms which is very satisfying. I feel like I should work for Bedec or take out shares!! I also painted our ugly white UPVC windows with it too! The rug has created a cozy area for entertaining or just hanging out with the family, and has become a real focal point of the back garden. I may even do one on our balcony next……..!
