Again?! *&$%#@&

At least twenty times a day, I fish Charlie Bacon's ball out from underneath the couch or the loveseat with a fricken' yard stick. That's on a good day. On a bad day, I just get sick of it, and ignore it. But, it drives me crazy. The whining. The pawing. The barking. *&$%#@&!

I had to come up with something to keep his dang gum ball out from under the couch. Seriously. Enough is enough. The solution? Pool noodles, covered in canvas drop clothes with duct tape. Yes. I actually said duct tape.

The supplies:

Measure the opening under your furniture. It really doesn't have to be exact. Close is absolutely good enough.

Measure out how long you need the pool noodle to be.

Cut the pool noodle to the correct length with a serrated knife.

Lay the pool noodle on your canvas drop cloth. Use it to get an idea of how big you need the canvas to be. See those fold-y lines? Use those as a guide for your cutting. No real need to measure, people! Just make sure to leave plenty of overlap to go around the noodle and at least 4 inches at each end.

If your furniture is long (like my three-seater to the left), you might have to put two pieces of pool noodle together. No problem. Just measure and duct tape those puppies together.

Yes, folks. I'm duct taping the fabric around the pool noodles. You can put the duct tape to the back and NO ONE will see it. Easy peasy.

How do you finish off the ends? No problem. There is a little hole at each end of a pool noodle. Just tuck the fabric in there. It stays put pretty darn well.

The big, rewarding AFTER shot:

Hmmm... not exactly a big TA DA because they're barely noticable. I realize that you *can* see these under the furniture, and that might really bug some people. You could absolutely use fabric that is the same color as your floor/rug/etc. Then, they would practically disappear in the background. I, however, wasn't really worried about it. That's code for "I was just entirely too lazy to go to the fabric store and just happened to have a spare drop cloth." For me, this is a look I can totally live with. And so far, NO balls under the couch. *sigh* Thank. Goodness.

Now, I'm actually looking forward to figuring out a good use for the rest of that canvas. I LOVE canvas. Surely I can think of something cool to do with it. Any ideas?