February 22, 2011

the blank space on the wall

Will and I have moved so much in our life together, so, so much. And over the years we've developed a sort of unspoken policy about art on our walls. It goes up within the first three days of moving in or bust. It doesn't matter if walls will need to be painted or we're not sure that the funiture will stay where it is, the art (and I'm using "art" loosley, we have no "art" but lots of photos and pictures and posters that we have collected over the years) goes up as soon as possible, because if it doesn't it might never go up. Case in point, the blank spot on the dining room wall.When we moved into this house we had most of our stuff up on the walls even as the kitchen sat half finished, the coutertops dried on the deck and piles of unsorted belongings everywhere. But there was one spot that we missed. Or maybe missed isn't the word. Nothing we had seemed right so we decided to get something new for the spot. And then, well, we finished the kitchen and moved on to the long list of other projects, and we never got around to that wall.
A few weeks ago I picked up some metal serving trays at a local charity shop and painted one of them with chalkboard paint to hang on our air duct as a message board. I attached magnetic strips to the back to hang it but once it was up I decided I didn't like it there and started looking around the room for a better spot. Like the blank spot. It was too small on it's own so I painted the other tray to match and hung them on the wall by screwing magnetic sheeting right onto the wall.
I had the kids do portraits of each other for the time being. Eventually, when Will isn't so swamped with work I want him to draw the kids silhouettes onto them. I think I could actually add something else up there as well, but at least now there isn't just nothing there. Much better. And fun as well :)