As I have mentioned a million times, I have been hard at work on some DIY house projects. Most are centered around the baby's room but one of the major ones you get to see today! It is pretty much my masterpiece and if you hate it, I don't care and I don't want to hear about it.
I got the idea from my "friends" over at Young House Love. They put together their wall awhile back and I have been plotting mine in my head ever since. When we moved into the new house I found the perfect wall but apparently needed to stare at it for 3 months before actually doing anything about it. Well, I finally tackled it in what became a week long project. Here is my step-by-step (does anyone remember that show with Suzanne Summers from like a million years ago? Is that the equivalent of the TV programming on the Disney Channel these days? I digress...)....
Step 1: Pick out lots of pictures and other random crap-o-la you want to frame for your wall. Once you have assembled all of these random items into frames, lay them out to see how you might want them organized.
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| The beginnings of laying out the wall (on the floor). |
Step 1a: Measure your wall and tape out the section that you want to cover in "art". Then replicate that same space on the floor and arrange your masterpiece (sorry, no photos of this detail).
Step 2: Once everything is laid out on the floor the way you want it, cut out templates of each frame to replicate on the actual wall. I did this with the help of the White House Black Market and Frontgate catalog. This might be the most tedious step as you have to measure each frame and cut the paper to the exact dimensions.
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| All of my frames covered by their corresponding magazine cut out. |
Step 3: Number everything. This might be unnecessary for some people, but it was the only way I was able to keep 34 pictures straight from floor to wall. I went through and placed a number on each frame and a corresponding number on the piece of magazine that was laid over it.
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| Number 26: Scott and me on our honeymoon (which ironically we were on at this time last year). |
Step 4: Take all those wonderful pieces of paper and begin taping them up as you want the frames to hang on your wall.
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| Starting to come together!! |
Step 5: You might think it is time to just stick some nails in the wall and hang up your frames, but wait...where exactly is the hanger located on the back of each frame and how will that effect the lie on the wall? That's right, time for another fun game of measure everything to the millimeter and get it perfect! At this point you have to flip each frame over and measure from the top of the frame to the point where the hanger/nail will hold. I simply made a list based on the numbers I put on the frames earlier.
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| Turns out the metric system worked better for this finite measuring project. |
Step 6: Take your list to the wall full of paper cut outs and measure out where each nail needs to be placed. Oh, and just to make things fun...you have to figure out where the perfect middle of each frame is and then measure from that point down to get your mark (did I mention this project took a week?).
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| Black dot marks the nail spot! |
Step 7: At long last it is time to hang. Hammer in your nails into the marks you have made and then you can rip the magazine away from around the nail. I would only put 2 or 3 nails in at a time and then hang the corresponding frames to make sure things didn't get off at any point.
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| The fun part! Hammering and hanging. |
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| Ta da!!! |
While it was a serious undertaking I am so happy I spent the time to do this as it really brings some life to the room and makes it feel like home. Plus, once Baby R arrives there is a bit of left over room to expand and it is easy peasy to switch out photos in existing frames. Also, only about 50% of these frames were white to begin with. My good friend spray paint was a huge help in this project!
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