So as you saw in this post and this post, we’ve been having a little trouble wrapping up a certain paint/art project…See below for a mid-way photo of the three trouble makers.
To refresh your memories (since we started this two weeks ago – WAY over our estimated timeline of two or three days) here’s what we started out with:
After a little paint, we finished with these:
The BIG HUGE CATASTROPHIC mistake I made was not prepping the frames before painting. I didn’t feel like taking the extra time to mask the edges, so I decided to spray paint the frames back to black later and painted right over them with my colors.
Unfortunately, those frames are not even close to easy to put back together…As you can tell from the first photo in this post, There are a LOT of parts for each – 26 to be exact. Each.
Needless to say, there was a lot of trial, error and struggle when it came to getting those bad boys back together, but we finally figured out the process.
Even though you probably don’t have the need to reassemble these types of frames in your house (God forbid that you do for the sake of your sanity), I’m going to go through the process step-by-step. I think I’m doing this just so you can appreciate (#1) how annoying it was and (#2) how stupid I was for being too impatient to do it right from the beginning…
That’s correct, I’m admitting defeat here – That’s gotta count for something!
So we start the process by laying out all of the pieces:
- 4 Black frame edge pieces
- 10 springs to hold the poster taut against the frame edge (we only ended up using 6 – Not sure where those four extra came from)
- 8 teenie tiny screws
- 4 “L-shaped” metal pieces with a couple of holes for screws (two of these pieces have felt pads and two do not)
- 4 “L-shaped” metal pieces without holes or felt pads
- Phillips screwdriver
After taking stock of the plethora o’ hardware, I flipped the poster board over and put the metal frame pieces in place, edges lined up and ready for hardware!
Now time for the connecting materials: the “L-shaped” metal pieces (with and without holes/felt) and screws.
I put the metal piece with holes on top of the one without holes and slid each set (four in total) into the corners where the frame pieces meet.
I then put the screws in the holes and screwed them in.
The screws push the two metal pieces apart, adding enough tension to keep the corners of the frame tightly held together. You may be able to see the difference between no-screws-and-loose and screws-in-and-tight in these next two photos:
The last step is to slip the springs under the frame edge to keep the poster pushed up against the inside edge of the frame. I put two springs on each long side and one on each short side.
Finally all done!
But as you can see below, this is NOT how I pictured the final result being…
The paint is peeling from where we struggled to get the frames on and the edge of the paint somehow doesn’t make it to the edge of the frame:
I can fix peeling paint, but no matter how much I gently shifted the poster around in the frame, the paint edges REFUSED to meet up correctly with the frame’s edge.
End result: Yellow poster went in the trash…
But luckily, we had a little bit more success with the gray posters using the same frame reconstruction as the yellow one:
I’ll have to do some touch-ups to the paint (this time, I’m going to mask) but I think these two can be salvaged. In fact, we even put them up on the wall! However, they didn’t get their place of glory in the living room as planned…They made their home upstairs in the hallway.
Eventually they’ll get touched up and some kind of hand-painted design or stencil on their plain surfaces. For now, I’m just glad that they’re finally up on the wall…
The moral of the story is: DON’T BE IMPATIENT!!!!!! From now on (or at least most of the time…because who am I kidding?) I’m going to make sure I do the right prep steps in the BEGINNING of a project to avoid these silly unnecessary delays later on. I’m also hoping that I never have to put a beloved project in the trash again 🙁
RIP yellow poster…
