Liz and I love our house, but since we’re renting and the landlord just had the walls repainted, we’ve needed to get a bit creative in adding the fun and color we desire. The most difficult room, by far, is the office/baby room. Simply the fact that it will (hopefully!) serve both of these needs makes it inherently challenging. Add in the fact that the room is small, has one window and a single overhead dome light, and you’ll start to get an idea of what we’re dealing with. In most of the rooms, we’ve been able to utilize curtains for controlling light, increasing energy efficiency, and adding much needed color to the very nicely toned but monotonous light gray walls. With the office’s single corner window, curtains just won’t cut it. We have plans for some creative shelving arrangements on one wall, and for some custom frame jobs on another wall (more projects!), but ideas for the large empty wall behind my desk have been eluding us since move-in day.

Last weekend was a thrifting weekend, and we had our sights set on baby clothes. We decided to check out a flea market right down the street, where we met some very nice people and happened upon this gem:
 

Measuring in just shy of 4ft x 5ft, it was the largest frame I’ve ever come in contact with. It was in pretty bad shape — water damage had stripped a lot of the finish, stained and warped the mounting, and left a less than pleasant looking residue on the glass. 
 

 
It was $15. It was fantastic! We told the seller we were going to use it in our baby room, and he remarked that we could do a map and planet theme with glow stars. It’s like he had known us our whole lives. Actually, it wasn’t anything like that. We told him we had other plans, and after learning that our purchase was too big for our vehicle, and then driving back home for supplies, and then slapping a huge frame with a huge sheet of glass on the roof of our car, and then very carefully arriving home, we started to flesh out our ideas. After a trip to Ikea, Jomar, and A.C. Moore, we were ready to get down to business!

And here’s my butt!

Removing the original stain with a power sander:

Liz wiping down the bare wood. With all that baby stuff happening inside her, she had to stick to the “special” tasks.

Here’s the beautiful wood that was just below the surface of all that nastiness! If we weren’t after vibrant colors, this grain would have made for a wonderful staining. 

Here’s my face!

After a priming and several coats of bright green paint, we mounted some large-pattern fabric and hung carefully on some heavy-duty hooks. I had been on the lookout for some up-lighting, and on our fabric run we happened upon these perfectly matching clamp lights on the cheap! Wooooo!

Posted on September 5th, 2008 at 9:14 PM by BabyDaddy in Projects, Shopping