looks like it's a tradition: President's Day = home improvement day

After Jon and I spent our whole President's Day holiday trying to give our little basement apartment some added character, I realized that's exactly what we did last year. The biggest difference being this year we did things that can come with us when we leave (which also means everything we did at our last place--paint, light fixtures, bathroom fixtures--were all landlord-reimbursed, and all handiwork this year came out of pocket).

Inspired on a trip last June by the way frames were hung at Thomas Jefferson's historic home Monticello, we spent the next 8 months mulling over the idea and finally made it happen. We LOVE the way it turned out, and it was much easier than the painting-the-kitchen-red project we tackled last year. It's a great way to display photos and give a big wall a nice gallery feel.
















This was so easy to do.

• we got the pole for $2.16 at Home Depot. It was plain silver something, and we searched good and hard to find the best deal. Watch out, there are at least 3 sections of raw pole materials, so don't settle on the first you find! I think we ended up getting this near the light fixtures, as opposed to the plumbing poles, curtain rod poles, or closet poles.
• our pole was 1/2" in diameter, 10 feet long. We had some guy cut about a foot off while we were there to save us the trouble at home, but anyone could take a hack-saw to it and get the job done.
• we bought brackets to match our pole diameter. These were also plain silver, and super cheap. We got a small bag of the kind that has a screw whole on each side of the bracket, and then another small bag of brackets with screw holes on only one side.
• we found screws to match the size of our bracket holes. They have sizers there in the screw section. Make sure they're long enough to give proper support for all the weight of the frames. I think we got 1.5" screws.
• black spray paint was essential for the Monticello look we were going for, we spray painted everything black when we got home
• we found some black ribbon at a craft store and just bought a whole spool so we wouldn't run out. I'm sure it would have been smarter to measure how much we wanted in advance, but we didn't want to take the time.

• before hanging the pole, we looped ribbon for each frame over the pole and tied it to the hook on the back of the frame (we did 8 frames). We lined up all the frames on the floor to make sure they would hang where we wanted them to
• with ribbons and frames attached, we put the pole on the wall, marked it for brackets, and screwed everything in. (this is obviously a 2-man job)

Here's the finished product that we LOVE:



























We also got a little crafty with an art print we'd bought on clearance over a year ago at a local art store that was closing. We wanted to spice it up a bit, so we got a blank canvas and some mod podge and after a few coats it almost looks like an original! And by almost I mean not really at all like an original, but you can tell that we tried. A little.

I saw on some mod podge tip site something about putting mod podge on both the surface you're putting the object on as well as the back of the object, and at least for me, that tip should not be applied to mod-podging paper, especially big huge ones that will start to warp and wrinkle before you ever finish coating it in time to put it on the canvas. I was almost in tears when I saw that my first attempt had nearly destroyed the whole project, but the good news is that the paper seems to tighten back up as it dries, thus mostly getting rid of the wrinkles.

Once I got over the wrinkles, I like it a lot. But I would probably use foam board next time instead of canvas, just because it's so much cheaper.