Two years into owning our home, we have four things hanging on the walls: 1) Cute initial prints that were a wedding gift, 2) apron/grocery-bag hooks in the kitchen, 3) a picture frame, and 4) a segmented travel map from my European backpacking trip a few years ago. That’s it. It looks more like we’re moving out and have removed everything to prevent our knocking it off the wall. But no, we just never bothered to hang anything up.
I’m the queen of propping. We have a mirror propped on our mantel, a few small framed prints propped on speakers and media cases, a large painting propped on our bedroom dresser, and the list goes on. Some propping is okay, but lazy propping is not.
We also have quite a few items we keep meaning to frame–we like to buy mementos from our travels to hang in the paneling room, hoping we will one day have a room full of our trips together. So far, we’ve collected a Jamie Hayes’s print from New Orleans, some notecards we got from a street artist in New York, an embroidered linen from our honeymoon in Greece, and a few other odds and ends. Not a single one has been framed much less hung. Not a one. Our travel-memorabilia room looks like this (can you find the three propped items?).
This weekend we decided to do something about it. We were fortunate enough to find original blueprints for our house when we moved in and have had plans to frame them but, as always, never quite made it the frame shop. So Saturday, we set out for the local framer with blue prints in hand. We also had the blueprint for the addition and figured we may as well take it too.
When we got there, we decided to frame one of the two blueprints from the original house and the blueprint for the addition. (We figure we can frame the second original print later if we want.) We chose a simple wood frame about an inch thick and a protective glass that will keep the print from fading in the sunlight. None of the prints are in pristine condition–coffee stains, paint splotches, pencil markings, stamps noting Vetrans Administration receipt, etc.–so we didn’t go with anything super fancy. Regardless, I think they’re going to look amazing, and it will be neat to have pieces of our home’s history on the walls.
For those of you who like numbers, we got a 15% discount because we work in education, so the grand total for both framing projects was $183 and some cents. Not bad, considering we’re framing large, oddly shaped prints and are getting fancy glass. This was my first professional framing experience, and I was expecting a much heftier price tag. I was thrilled to get them both under $200.
I haven’t gotten the call that they’re ready yet, but as soon as I do, we’ll pick ‘em up and get ‘em on the wall ASAP, to avoid my lazy propping habit, of course. Then we’ll be back with a report on our not-so-naked walls. We’re getting there, folks. Slow and steady wins the race, right?
