DIY Life Hack For Dog Owners That Keeps Furniture Intact
By Cat Pesale
As a dog owner, it’s safe to assume that no corner of your house is paw-proof. This can especially be an issue if you have leather furniture or fabric cushions, which can all be extremely susceptible to unsightly scratches from pup claws. Unless you put your dogs into dog booties, many owners deal with this issue by putting plastic on their furniture, investing in specialized couch covers, or trying different DIY life hacks or DIY dog projects that sacrifice style for function.
Fortunately, there’s an easy DIY life hack that you can use to not only protect your furniture while you’re not around with your dogs, but also to spruce up the design of your furniture. And, as you can see, dogs love it too!
The solution? Draping colorful and durable table runners over your chairs to protect your furniture from dog scratch marks.
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How Table Runners Are the Ideal DIY Dog Project Life Hack to Protect Furniture
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Choosing table runners for your furniture is a great DIY dog project option since they’re not only inexpensive—with durable table runners costing about $20-$25 each—but also design-friendly in that there are unlimited color options to choose from to use with your furniture. When selecting a table runner, make sure that the fabric content is durable enough to withstand dog paw clawing. We’ve had best results with 100% cotton, duck ticking, and twill fabrics, though you should certainly experiment with different fabric types to see what would work best for your needs.
All that you would need to do is remove any cushions from your chair, and then drape the tablecloth over the chair so that both ends drape off of back and front of your chair or sofa (Step 1). Afterwards, tuck part of the tablecloth into the gap behind the seat cushion (Step 2), and then put all other cushions and decorative pillows back on the chair over the gap (Step 3).
We highly recommend purchasing a table runner that’s over 2 yards long so that the length of the table runner fully covers your chair. If you find that you have extra length, hang the rest of your tablecloth off the back of the chair as shown above. Doing so can add a nice decorative accent to your furniture.
So if you’re looking for a way to protect your furniture while you’re out of the house–or playing chess with your dog–try using table runners to help keep your chairs and furniture scratch-free!