Umm... This Could Be Bad

So, we have this couch.

 

It's a lovely little Ikea pull-out couch that has served us well for both seating and accommodating out-of-town guests. The thing about this couch, though, is that it's slip-covered. Cool, you say, that means you can wash it. No dice. It's dry clean only, and the one time I took it to get it dry cleaned they called me later and told me they wouldn't do it because they were afraid of the liability of ruining my couch. I tried to convince them it was just a slip cover and it would be all right. They didn't believe me. They must have thought I was trying to angle my way into a ridiculous law suit or something.

Well, as you probably noticed the couch is off-white. And I have a 2 year old.

So, not the best mix. It has been looking pretty shabby, so I thought we'd better replace it.

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Not the best picture, but it does illustrate some of the shabbiness. The cushions were starting to look grey in places.

Then I got to thinking about changing the color palette of my living room (I get bored, it's a major failing) - and I found this color scheme of grey and green in Traditional Home magazine and just fell in love. So I started researching cost for a new, grey slipcover and found out it was going to cost around 200$. Yikes. So I thought, maybe I should try a few things with one we have first. That's when I got the crazy idea to dye my slipcover grey.

"What happened to dry-clean only?!" you're asking, I know. Well, I thought if we're going to just replace it anyway, I might take the risk of ruining it. And that's just what I did.

Yeah. See that? It looks like... well, it looks bad. Images of gelatinous man-eating goo keep popping into my head. That's after a very failed attempt to dye the slipcover in a plastic tub on the back deck. Oh snap. And as I was watching the horror unfold before my eyes, I got a call about our car needing new tires AND a new battery. So, basically, we have no money, so this is our couch cover for a while, whether it's hideous or not.

This story may yet have a happy ending, though. I decided I was not going to give up so easily (it would be so awful to have to put that cover back on my couch), took a deep breath and went back to Joann's for more dye. $12.00 later, I'm retrying the experiment - this time in the washing machine and with twice as much dye divided into three batches. I just checked on batch number one and it is looking much more hopeful - it's at least evenly dyed, and coming close to the color I wanted. Now I just have to let it all line-dry and hope nothing shrunk. That "Do Not Wash!" admonition still has me on edge.


Here's hoping I end up with something better than this:

Have you ever tried dying anything? How did it go? Happy stories? I need some encouragement... but commiseration would also suffice.