DIY: Recovering a Mouse Pad

It’s amazing how long we can put up with a crappy mouse pad. It cracks, peels, stinks, fades, whatever—and it will still take us months (years)  to replace it. Why? Because let’s be honest: it’s never that big a deal, that bad, that inconvenient, that gross. It takes a lot for us to jump it to the top of our priority list. And besides, USUALLY there aren’t really cool ones staring us in the face at the checkout, and so the weeks pass and we just put up with our disgusting, old, almost non-functioning mouse pads. Get this: we recently became so desperate for a functioning mouse pad that we FINALLY put the old one to rest (in the trash), and instead of going out and buying a new pad like a normal person, my husband covered a large square of our desktop with PACKING TAPE. True story. And I put up with it!! For months! Perhaps the better part of a year!

Sheesh. I’m not proud of that.

But when I finally decided to touch-up the paint on our desk, the time came for me to do something about our embarrassing mouse pad sitch. I wanted a cool one, but didn’t want to spend any $$ on it, (they’re probably dirt cheap– I didn’t even check. I guess the DIY route is just how I roll).  I passed the office section in DI, and picked up two really gross old pads. So gross and so old that the old fabric was peeling up. Perfect.

I started where Dave at Novel left off, and peeled up the nasty old grey fabric.

Then I used the pad as my template to cut out the new fabric. Cool! My rotary cutter matches my fabric!

Then I failed to take some pictures because I was madly trying to spread glue and press my fabric on before it dried. Don’t worry, it wasn’t as exciting as it sounds. I’ll tell you what you missed. I used some multi-purpose glue to slowly glue the fabric to the pad. I went about an inch at a time, squeezed some glue on the pad, smeared it evenly on the pad with my finger, and then smoothed the fabric over that area and so forth until it was nicely and evenly glued on. I then went around the edges with fray check, just to make sure it doesn’t acquire any stragglers.

Then I busted Bill out, and put him to good use pressing my fabric to pad while it dried completely. Hey come on Bill! You know I love you…

Shoot! I forgot to wipe the glue off my fingers before it dried! Leprosy! And not the cool kind you intentionally created when you were a kid with Elmer’s.

Ahh. That’s better. Now our mouse happily finds itself in an orange field of grey….old-school TV flowers.