Did You Know You Can Re-Size Your Rugs?
One of the trickiest things when moving from one home into another, is getting items (that you really, truly love) to fit AND fit well. We’ve become pros at shuffling furniture up, down, and all around in order to find the “just right” spot for every last item. But sometimes, there are things that won’t fit, no matter what. On this most recent move…it was our rugs. Read on to see what (drastic?) measures we took to make them fit!
Rugs That Don’t Fit
Our large house in North Carolina had all hardwood floors; and as a result, we ended up buying several (very large) good quality rugs to protect our delicate tootsies. (You can see what we picked and why here).
But now, in our 1800ish square foot house in California (that has wall-to-wall carpet upstairs), we had almost no spots for any of them.
One rug is now rolled up and protected in our garage.
Another got sold at a (shamefully) low bargain on Facebook Marketplace.
But my 10×14’ Pottery Barn rug that I waited forever for (and quite frankly) paid a lot for? I wasn’t letting that one go for $100 on Facebook.
So what do you do with a gorgeous, high-quality rug that you don’t want to get rid of but doesn’t fit your room?
You cut it.
Record screech……..
Yep, I said…cut it.
Did You Know You Can Get Rugs Re-Bound?
This Pottery Barn rug is my favorite that we’ve ever ever bought. But it was 7” too long for our new family room. Seven inches!
For months, I hemmed and hawed (and hemmed and hawed some more) on where to store it, what to do with it…always coming to the conclusion that I just didn’t want to get rid of it.
And then it occurred to me: what if we had it re-bound?!?
After a fairly simple Google search, I found a local rug cleaners that also did professional rug re-sizing. I sent off a few pictures for a quote, and they confirmed they could copy the hand-woven binding already on the rug.
Yes, it was a pain to load a 10×14’ (HEAVY!) wool rug into my car (and bring it home again).
And I hate that I had to pay (about $250) to “fix” a rug that was in perfectly good shape.
But I LOVE that we got to keep this rug in our home (and not store it in our garage).
I LOVE that I didn’t have to sell it off for pennies on the original price.
And I LOVE how it looks in our new family room.
Hand vs. Machine Binding
In this process, I learned there are two main types of rug binding: hand binding (more expensive, longer completion time) and machine binding (cheaper, quicker).
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(Our rug place charged by the foot and had two different rates for hand versus machine binding.)
Once the carpet place saw pictures of my rug, they could tell instantly what kind of binding it was (hand) and gave me a quote without even going into the store.
Bottom (lighter) binding is the original. Top (darker) binding is the new binding.
New binding IS darker from original binding, but it is not visible when the rug is rolled out.
Once we understood the process, we decided to get our smaller/cheaper outdoor rug re-sized to better fit in our dining nook, as well. This rug was machine bound and cost about $100.
Cutting Rugs By Hand
Our large wool rug was thick and expensive, so no way was I going to attempt a DIY cut/binding project.
But after the machine binding on our dining room rug cost almost as much as the rug itself, I couldn’t help but experiment with another outdoor rug we had that (also) wouldn’t fit on our front porch (are you sensing a trend?!?)
I LOVE Target’s outdoor rugs, and we have quite a few of them. We had no place for this brown one, so I decided to try cutting it down to fit our skinny front porch.
Thanks to its super-thin, polyester texture, I was able to cut it with heavy duty scissors.
And then to keep it from fraying, I “finished” the edge by melting it with a lighter.
Would I use this cut+melt solution on an indoor rug? Possibly, depending on where it was and who would see it. Could I have also “hemmed” it with rug tape? Probably.
But…was this a perfect way to get our huge outdoor rug to fit our new porch without spending a dime, in about 30 minutes? Absolutely!
Diver Deeper Into This Project
Looking for more info on this project? Below are my voice notes about how we settled on the right size for the re-binding and the unexpected surprises we got as a result!
Key Takeaway
In general, I’m not a “cut things apart” kind of gal. When something doesn’t fit when we move into a new home, we either figure out a way to store it or get rid of it.
But in the face of having to get rid of something high quality that I truly loved, cutting it (professionally) really was the best call.
In the end, this project showed me that there are lots of different ways to make things fit in your home!
Megan
3 Comments on “Did You Know You Can Re-Size Your Rugs?”
I’m so glad you are back! Such clever ideas!
I layer rugs on top of my carpets- it helps define the space!
I was too cheap to pull up perfectly good carpet when I bought my house. Just put the carpets on top. Only to read recently that this is a centuries-old interior design trick!
Thank you for sharing your clever ideas!
Clever – I would not have thought to do this! I have always liked your trellis rug, but you’re right – the blue one looks SO much better in that space. It just feels calmer.
Really interesting post!
My rugs aren’t super expensive, but I didn’t want to sell them either when we moved into our house last year. I ended up folding one of the sides under. I put the folded edge under the couch, against our long wall. No one can tell. We’ll see in the next house how well it unfolds.