Wall Makeover

Last time when Loving Husband was away on a mission I went to work and put together the entire nursery.  Paint, furniture building, decorating.    It was fun to get it totally together and a good way to pass time - having no more nurseries or bedrooms to remake (since we just had repainted our bedroom when we moved back in October)  I decided to do something about our basement. 

The basement is a relatively long space and the walls were all one color.   Boring. It is a multipurpose room housing the playroom, office, 'library' and the biggest tv in the house. I knew that I didn't want to paint the whole room that would be daunting and honestly there wasn't any color that I could imagine down there on every wall.   It had been on my mind for years now to make the most center wall a wall for pictures -  for the most part the walls down there remained pretty blank.     I ultimately decided that was the wall that was going to get some paint while LH was gone and I was finally going to execute my picture wall.   :)

In early February, not too long after Loving Husband left on his mission I took the kids and went to the hardware store in search of the perfect blue.   I wanted a bold blue that wasn't too dark, too light,  too "baby" blue,  too teal,  too gray,  too "beachy" and I didn't want to  have to buy new curtains (which are a dark navy blue.)   I thought Martha Stewart might be my best bet for a unique bold color that fit my profile - but alas she failed me (miserably in fact!)   I ended up going with a Behr paint: Ocean View.    Came home with all my needed painting supplies and then we got sick...

Fast forward seven weeks later and the wall remained unfinished and LH was due home in 48 hours.   So on Friday afternoon I finally decided to get my butt in gear and get started on this project.   It took me about 30 minutes to tape and prep the area - which was done during the kids naptime.    Ace woke up right after I started painting (thankfully I had gated myself in with some baby gates)  and Mae woke up when I was about half way done.  She was not terribly thrilled with my unavailability, but since painting took less than 40 minutes she survived.     We left the project for the night.

The next morning I went back and did some touch ups.  I had only bought a quart of paint and apparently was quite liberal with the initial application so I didn't have enough to do a full roller on of a second coat.   Finished painting and then cleaned up the area.   We had lunch and did a few other things and I went back to the project and started taping up paper mock ups of the frames that I had.    I know you're supposed to wait a while to hang pictures, but I'm impatient and the wall was dry enough for me.  ;) 

My original intent was not to do all B&W pictures but the more and more I chose to put up the concentration of them dictated that I use all B&W which is fine by me - I love it. I'm also pretty proud that out of the eleven pictures on that wall, seven of them were taken by me (or the timer.) :)  Ultimately, I placed pictures in an organized chaos sort of fashion with some of the frames laid out in a way that I can convert them to vertical or horizontal depending on if I want to switch up the pictures that are in them.   

After all the pictures were hung I did a little reorganizing of furniture - as I no longer liked the idea of the kids toys been directly under the majority of the frames.  So I moved some books around on the bookshelves and centered the bookshelf to the center of the wall.   Ultimately I plan to get some of the 3M products to affix the frames (especially the bigger ones) a little more officially to the wall, but for now this makes me feel a little safer.  :)

Moved all the toys around the room where I wanted them to be and the project was complete.    Overall the placement of the frames took way more time than prepping/painting/cleaning up, but that's ok - as it is - I might still tweak the frame placement a little or add one or two more.   I also am contemplating a decal below the art work... we'll see!  

So what was Loving Husband's reaction upon coming home?   "It's very blue!"  ... well ok :)  I love it and he'll tolerate it, so I guess I'll take it.