Cheap DIY Art and Free Image Sources
Posted: May 21, 2013 Filed under: Bedroom, Decorating, DIY | Tags: Charles Cushman, diy art, framing, Indiana University 10 Comments »Thanks for your nice comments on my bedroom makeover! I’m back, as promised, with details on the wall art.
As you might have guessed, they’re engineering prints. I first heard of them via Jenny at Little Green Notebook, who used Kinkos/FedEx Office’s large format blueprint printer to blow up a photograph for $4. She mounted it to foam board with snazzy painted edges:
(Image from Little Green Notebook)
Zandi over at Radical Possibility also posted about this super cheap giant art: she used Staples for her print and displayed it awesomely with a thumbtack border:
(Image from Radical Possibility)
Finally, I took a cue from Anna at Door Sixteen for an inexpensive frameless frame:
(Image from Door Sixteen)
I bought cheap wood trim, which I cut to size (about a half inch wider than the 24” print) and then stained. I used my chop saw but this could be done very easily with a handsaw.
I found gold binder clips at OfficeMax – the metal color is cheaper looking than I would like and I thought about spray painting them more of a brass color, but that wave of craziness passed. They’re fine as-is. Note to self: access your uncrazy side more often.
I simply clipped the prints to the trim at top and bottom and then used brass tack nails to hang the art. The prints from Staples were $4 each, the clips were less than $5 with a coupon and the wood trim was also $5: under $25 all totaled for a wall of art.
As for the art itself: there are lots of great resources online for images within the public domain. The Library of Congress has a huge (overwhelming, really) collection that is thoroughly indexed: you can search their Prints & Photographs Online Catalog by keyword – “hygiene,” for example:
My images came from the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, thanks to Indiana University’s Digital Library Program. I upped the contrast of the photographs before submitting to Staples for printing, to help retain some of the details in the black and white conversion.
The black border from Cushman’s Kodachrome color slides works well for this display style, creating a natural frame for the image.
I love Cushman’s photographs. They hearken to a simpler time, when girls skipped rope and beer flowed from water towers and babies drank that beer while wearing berets without any fear of judgment.
Bedroom Makeover
Posted: May 20, 2013 Filed under: Bedroom, Decorating, DIY, Furniture | Tags: diy, diy art, dresser, nightstands 15 Comments »“Makeover” actually isn’t the right word because the bedroom was never maked to begin with.
We had an off-white carpet remnant rug that got dingy nearly immediately – terrible idea! We had a picture ledge that I always intended to style but never did. We had matching MALM nightstands that were too small. I later bought an old pair of nightstands (one seen on the right) on Craigslist that I refinished, immediately decided that I didn’t like and then sold for a profit.
I swapped out rugs, blankets, etc. as I honed in on what I wanted and didn’t want — the former is always much harder for me than the latter — and I finally gathered all of the pieces and put everything together in one exhausting weekend.
And here’s where we are today:
I bought a new rug from Overstock and stained, painted and added hardware to a new pair of IKEA RAST nightstands. The wall art and framing was less than $25 total, and I reupholstered our existing headboard with new fabric, adding nailhead trim.
I swapped the dresser with one I had in the basement and plopped a plant in a basket.
Doozy is indifferent to the changes but I am pleased to finally have a bedroom that feels put together. I will write follow-up posts on the headboard, art and nightstands, so check back later this week if you’re interested in details on any of those projects!
Apartment Doorbell Label Holder Things
Posted: May 14, 2013 Filed under: DIY, Etc, Outdoors | Tags: doorbell, labels, victory 2 Comments »When we moved into our apartment I quickly taped up our names below the doorbell, thinking “I’ll fix this in a few days.” And then I didn’t, for months. Two years, almost.
It’s the sort of thing you eventually stop seeing, but a Craigslist buyer was in our apartment recently and he said “Wow, I didn’t think the inside would look this nice based on the outside!” Thanks, and ouch? As a renter, I don’t care all that much about curb appeal, but I don’t want strangers bracing themselves for squalor.
Some haphazard Google searching eventually led to these metal label holders. (Currently listed for $4.27 – I bought them for $9. What the hell, Amazon? I thought we were friends!)
I sprayed the holders with enamel clear coat to protect them from the elements. I also wrapped the printed labels in tape as a half-assed lamination.
Much better, yeah?
Building a Picture Ledge for a Neon Sign
Posted: May 1, 2013 Filed under: Decorating, DIY, Furniture, Kitchen, Paint it White, Tools | Tags: diy, island, kitchen, neon, stools, wall art 1 Comment »This right here is the kitschiest thing I’ve ever loved.
I found it in an antique mall in mid-Missouri (Apache Flats represent!) for $30. Something about it is hilarious to me. Neon seems appropriate for vices, like BEER or GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. Not SALADS. It lived in the basement for a while, illuminating our ping-pong parties, but I decided I liked it enough to display in the kitchen.
West Elm, Pottery Barn, IKEA, etc. have lots of options for picture ledges, but 1) they’re expensive, 2) they weren’t the exact width and depth I wanted, and 3) they have a raised lip on the front, which I didn’t need. I wanted a floating shelf that would hold the sign and virtually disappear.
I bought some inexpensive wood and used glue and screws to join the two pieces. I put my new countersink drill bit to work so that the screws would sit below the surface of the wood, and I filled in the recesses with wood filler before painting.
I wanted the ledge to look like it was one single piece – not two connected pieces – so I waited to cut the ledge to the correct length until after I joined the two pieces. This worked really well – my chop saw ensured the edges aligned perfectly and after smoothing the end grain with some wood filler and painting it, the ledge looks legit.
Similar to the oddly but perfectly placed outlet in our living room (for our leaning bookshelves), we have an oddly but perfectly placed outlet smack in the middle of our kitchen wall.
SALADS!
(The sign is discretely tethered to the wall at the top so there’s no danger of it toppling over.)
Just a couple of other changes to the kitchen since you saw it last back in summer of 2011 – as a reminder, it used to look like this before I painted the wainscoting, scored the STENSTORP island off Craiglist and painted the ceiling fan:
I bought the ubiquitous BONDIS wall clock and I ordered the Tabouret counter stools from Overstock.com after months of Craigslist searching didn’t turn up anything I liked as much.
I highly recommend these stools – they’re super sturdy and you can’t beat the price (under $80 with coupons for a pair). They also come in fun colors, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not, but it’s fine if you are. No judgement.
Zero Dollar Laundry Room Makeover
Posted: April 2, 2013 Filed under: DIY, Paint it White, Storage | Tags: basement, flor, laundry, makeover, rental, victory 6 Comments »One of the benefits of my basement hoarding is that I have frequently have enough supplies on hand to complete a weekend project without spending any additional cash. This is particularly important for any communal areas I tackle: as an apartment renter, I don’t want to spend much money on a space that isn’t “mine.” But this is our home and small, inexpensive improvements can make it feel even more so. (Our landlords, I should note, are enthusiastic about all of my projects and they, regularly and hilariously, defer to me on decisions regarding the property. Jarrod jokes that I’ve been deputized.)
This laundry room area has always felt unnecessarily grungy. That little storage nook was full of unused products and left-behind items, including this baseball, which was signed, twice, by a previous tenant — who is a full-grown man. It’s pretty endearing, really.
A few simple changes made our laundry area look much more finished. I know this Before & After isn’t going crash Pinterest’s servers (for one thing, I didn’t use chalkboard paint or white vinegar), so I’ll just dive right in.
Before:
After:
Before: the unfinished wood was difficult to clean – not that anyone had ever tried.
After: I unearthed a few peel-and-stick vinyl tiles from our landlords’ trash pile, which will be much easier to wipe clean. I centered the middle tile and then trimmed the other tiles to fit around it.
Before: You know that episode of 30 Rock where James Carville says “Cajun style!“? Whenever I see half-assed jobs like this, I say “Landlord style!” There was no need for this shelf support to be so huge, and there was certainly no need for that many screws.
After: I cut a cheap garden stake to use as a shelf bracket and stained all of the wood to match.
Before:
After: A few wood trim scraps, caulk and white paint makes the shelf and moulding look much more finished.
I scrubbed the sink and put out hand soap and a towel. I washed and painted the back wall and hung a clock. I also had some Flor carpet tiles from our previous apartment that I used to cover the concrete floor – when you accidentally drop an item of clothing, it’s nice to not feel like you have to wash it again. (Side note: while I don’t love their hard/unfinished edge, reconfigurable Flor tiles are great for frequently-moving renters.)
Before: Once more, for comparison.
After:
A small victory! My next post will bring us back out of the basement, I promise.
