Hanging in the Dining Room

A few months ago, my husband, mom, dad, baby, and I went to visit my uncle who lives in my dad’s hometown of Marianna, Florida. It was the first time Brandon and Mary Helen got to meet Uncle Mike! So it was a special trip. We also had an opportunity to walk through my grandma’s old house to see if there was anything we’d like to keep before they cleared it out to rent. (She passed away in 2012.)

One thing, or 3 things I should say, I took home were some old wooden utensils I remember hanging in her and my granddad’s kitchen most of my childhood.

I thought it’d be a cute idea to hang canvases above with the words ‘eat’ ‘pray’ and ‘love’ painted on them. Not because I’m a fan of the book or movie, neither of which I’ve read or watched, but because that’s what happens in our dining room. Lots of eating, praying, and love!

After I hung them in place just the way I wanted them, I hung a print of the Last Supper ($8 at a local thrift store) and a gold-framed mirror I picked up at our church’s yard sale for $5 on the adjacent wall.

The problem is, I loved the utensil wall and I loved the mirror over the framed print. But I didn’t love them together. It looked junky or too matchy-matchy.

Originally, I only had the framed Last Supper for that wall. After I hung the utensils and canvases the way I had envisioned, I picked up the mirror and thought it’d look cute over the print. But once I saw everything together. Ugh.

I thought well maybe it will look better once I paint the canvases. But I didn’t want to put the effort into painting them only to still hate it. So I decided I liked the mirror and frame combo better than the canvas/utensil combo. The canvases got the boot and the utensils moved up a few inches to be centered vertically with the art on the other wall.

I also was not crazy about having the wooden utensils next to the wooden frame. It was too “dark” for my taste. But I’m always hesitant to change the color or finish on something especially with the fine details like the tops of the utensils. So I thought it’d be less of a commitment to paint the frame of the Last Supper. Before I whipped out the paint brush, I photoshopped the same poppy red I used for the back of my bookcase onto the frame.

After removing the print and painting 3 nice and thick coats on the frame to cover all of the wood grain trying to pop through, I hung it back up.

And it looked hideous!

Here I thought I was being all clever using Photoshop to try it out before I did the work…

By itself it looked fine, but I thought it was just too much of a contrast to the rest of the muted tones in the room. While I figured out how I was going to handle my clown nose picture frame, I coated the utensils with a high gloss polyurethane spray.

My thought was it was an easy way to freshen them up without changing it too much. And given my latest fiasco (see frame above) it was probably a wise decision!

Given that I have very hardy plaster walls, I used Tapcon masonry screws to attach the utensils to the wall. Unfortunately they are bright blue. To help them blend in a little more with the fork, knife, and spoon, I colored the screw heads with a black permanent marker after they were in place.

I decided to strip the red off the frame and either go back to the original wood tone or re-stain it, depending on how well the stripper worked. More details on the chemical stripper and elbow grease I used in my next post. But for now, here’s how things ended up:

I’m keeping an eye out for a giant frame to possibly hang around the utensils, so holler if you know where I can get one!

Also, this post serves as proof that I am not a decorator nor designer and it obviously does not come easy to me! Oh how I wish it did, though! I’ll do the work, but I’d be okay if someone came over and told me what to hang and where!

Thanks for Checking In! ~ Chelsea