HomeStyle: beautiful burlap

We have this ugly little cupboard-looking door (water main access) on a wall in our family room in the basement. The bane of my home-owning existence. Well, it's a toss-up between that door and our mortgage...but still.

I'd been on the hunt for months to find a suitable (translation: cheap, beautiful, and correctly sized) folding screen to put in front of it, with no luck.

The screen had to be tall enough to cover the door but short enough to leave a mounted speaker (near the ceiling) free. It also had to be narrow enough to not block the TV (on a shelf right next to it) but wide enough to cover the door. Ugh.

Stupid, stupid door.

Enter: the best day of my e-life, where I stumbled upon this little gem of inspiration:

(Forgive me, I can't find the website where I got this pic from...if anyone knows, please please let me know and I'll credit it!)

Hanging burlap! Brilliant! and cheap! annnnnnnd customizable! I got some burlap, cut it to size, and, using the above pic as a guide, busted out some acrylic paints and a sponge brush to paint the design.

I only had to sew the sides, the top (for a curtain rod) and the bottom (to hold a "weight" of sorts so it would hang straight...I used an old wooden blinds slat).

After rummaging around in the garage, I found my old missing hiking sandals (saweet! they'd been missing forever!) and, more importantly and pertinent to this particular endeavor, some chains and a curtain rod. I spray-painted both black and hung them up. (Have I told you lately how much I love spray paint? Oh man, that stuff is glorious. Easy, quick-drying, and did I mention easy. Bim-bam-boom.)

Hung up the burlap at an angle to soften the corner a bit and make it look less like I had something to hide. Which I did. But I didn't want the world to know that. The world who comes into our basement. Which is at least 10 non-family people a year. So.

End result:



The painting's not the best; I messed up on the right-hand side where it's supposed to "flow" off the burlap, but we've lived with it and survived okay. What about you guys? Do you have anything in your house that you want to hide or that you've already successfully hidden/camoflauged? I'd love to hear about it. Seriously. I love this kind of stuff.