Faux Painted Rug

One thing I've always wanted to do was to paint large faux rug on our deck. I didn't think John would agree to it, but to my surprise he did....although I don't think he really knew what I meant when I explained it to him!

I had been thinking about this project for a long time, so everytime I set out on the deck I was working out designs in my head...counting boards in the deck, thinking about colors, etc.  I knew I needed to keep the design simple because I didn't want anything too busy to look at all the time.

I decided to use solid color stain that contains a sealant instead of paint because it would be less likely to scratch when scooting furniture across it.  I used Olympic Maximum in Navajo Red, Taupe, Chocolate & Autumn Gray (which looks blue) as my colors and one quart of each did the entire job:

With my design in my head, a tape measure and painters tape, I got started:

I had decided the border of the rug would be 3 boards wide, so I measured and taped the side borders and then got staining.  I cut a star out of cardboard and traced it for the 4 corners.

The inside of the rug would be stripes....
remember by keeping simple, I was able to just use each board as a stripe:

Then I added the finishing touches to really make it look like a rug...trim around the border and then fringe on the 2 ends:

And then it was done!  Other than some knee and back pain, it was really a pretty simple project and I've gotten a lot of compliments on it.