Project Protect my Rugs

Inclined Horizontal Scratching Mat

Why?

I started this project because my sister's cat loves coming in my room to scratch my rugs. Since I like my rugs and Gunner , the cat. likes scratching horizontal surfaces.

Sourcing the materials

This things that I knew I needed were

1. carpet
2. Two boards of the same size
3. nails
4. posts to create the incline of the scratcher

What I knew I had was the carpet and the nails. The carpet was a roll of old carpet given to me by a friend. The nails were from my dad's garage. The boards and posts on the other hand were a little different. I knew that they would involve a little more work, for example cutting and ripping to size. However as luck would have it, when I talked to my mother about the prospective project she had some materials in store. She had these mini corn hole boards, one of which was soaked in an oily substance and ruined. So she gave them to me to use for this project. They were perfect because they were a good side and one of them had legs (the other one had its legs missing).

Start the Build

Step One: remove the leg mounts from the damaged board.

(I started to take pictures after I had already started the process so the pictures are after the first couple of steps.)

The Build

Step Two: Trace the board onto the back of the carpet, and create around a tree inch boarder from the board marking and cut out the carpet. I used a box knife, I placed a cardboard box under the carpet to prevent the table from getting cut.

The Build

Step Three: cut the corners off of the carpet section so that the carpet meets in the back. This is called mitering.

The Build

Step Four: wash the carpet. This carpet has been out side all winter and needed cleaning. To not waist water I washed this with about five other rugs.

The Mistake

Step Five: realize that there was no binding on the carpet, that mother was right and that the carpet really did fall apart in the wash. Then panic for a little and forget to take some pictures for a while while tiring to figure out how to fix the mistake.

Another Issue

The nails that I chose were too long for the boards.

The solution

I solved this problem by adding the cut off corners to the corners of the board to increase bulk. This was not enough bulk so in the end I took my hammer and bent over the nails through the top. This was done so that the nails did not protrude through the carpet.

The Biuld

It was difficult to hold down the carpet as I prepared to attach the bottom. I ended up hot gluing the edges down. I also hot glued the corners together.