Wednesday, March 30, 2011

I'm not a widow!!! AND Dining Room Wall Art!

I had to tell my husband about the painted walls yesterday because I just blab about everything. And you know what?! He actually said he liked it! I don't know if he'll admit that to anyone else, but I'm ok with that ;-)

Remember how my saw was on the table in my previous post?

That's because I had to use my saw horses to make art for the amazing blue walls. You can't just have a beautiful wall like that and leave it alone, right? It would be like having an amazing outfit, but no accessories!

So here, my beautiful wall, are your accessories...


Please tell me that you're as excited about that as I am!? PLEASE?! Because I am giddy as HECK and I can NOT stop grinning!

I wish I could say that I was only "inspired" by the silhouettes that I saw over at California Callahans, but really... I straight out copied it. You can find the tutorial here, so I won't go into how I made it... but I have an amazing way to hang things and look industrial chic. Ish. :-p

I didn't want the boards to be hung with a picture hanging kit because that usually means that they're angled downward, and I wanted them parallel to the wall. I could have screwed them directly into the wall, but I didn't really want to do that, either. So I went to big ol' Blue and looked in the hardware department for ideas. And luckily this time I got one!! (rarely happens) 

I got 12 hex bolts and 12 nuts that were a little too big for them (and some drywall anchors, because I was out), and came home to get to work. I marked 1 inch from the top and 1 inch from the side of each corner and pre-drilled the holes for the bolts. Then I put my level on top of the board and found where I wanted to put it and (holding it REALLY firmly so that it didn't slip) I just drilled through the pre-drilled holes into the wall. That gave me the placement of the dry wall anchors. Then I started to screw the bolts into the holes until they were almost all the way through, and then put the nuts on the back of the board. Lined it up to the dry wall anchors and finished screwing it in. That way all of the boards are a quarter inch off the wall, parallel. Measured an inch and a half over and did it again, 'til all 3 boards were up.

The color's obviously off in these pictures (that color would be AWFUL for a dining room), but here's a close-up. I didn't do nearly as well as the Callahans did (LOVED their fork!), but I'm happy to say that I did this.


Here's a side-view, to show how I did the nuts/bolts.

I have to add that when I was reading the instructions for this, they'd mentioned that they didn't want theirs to be shiny at all. And I just couldn't understand that! I mean, I LOVE shiny! So I tried to stain the boards first and realized that these did NOT look good shiny. Especially with the side-lighting  in the dining room. The Callahans used chalkboard aping to get a super matte finish, but I didn't have any and didn't want to spend $16 to get some. I remembered that Krylon has a camouflage spray paint in ultra-flat for about $3, so I went to Wally World and got that (I didn't see any at the local Blue).

Annnnd.... here's where I painted them.... 


In the rocks in my back yard. Hubby's working on removing all of them slowly, but surely. So it really didn't matter. I found it quite amusing! :-)

1 comment:

  1. Love it! You did a fabulous job. So glad someone else liked my idea :)

    Leah
    californiacallahans.blogspot.com

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