Decor
A New Vignette
The great bathroom update of 2023 began in spring and finally came to an end in the fall of 2023. However it wasn't until Thanksgiving that the final touch of the update was put in place. This last piece was just a decorative touch as opposed to any structural, electrical or wall covering type of project. In fact, this piece was effectively the implementation of a new photograph vignette here at 173. Let's get into it.
When Last We Met
When last we met about the bathroom update, all the major updates to the sheet rocking the wallpaper and the electric. All the lights the outlets all of that was complete. The bathroom was once again fully functional and that was pretty much the end of the project. We had the shelves and the towel racks up, but other than that, the walls were pretty bare. Of course, bare isn't necessarily a bad look, there's something to be said about a minimalistic space sometimes, but we did want to do something with the one fairly large open space behind the toilet.
Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything. - Aaron Siskind
At first we were considering a shelf or two to go on the wall, but none of the shelves we looked at seemed to look right. They were either too large vertically or too large in the sense that they would stick out, maybe not over the toilet, but just too far out from the wall to look right. So we had to figure something else out.
The Idea
When we finally came to the realization that shelves just wouldn't look right for us, we started considering other options like buying a canvas print, or some old-school floral prints. But at one point it dawned on us that, in the living room and the dining room we had created vignettes of photos taken by us or family members. This vignette is a collection of prints from Germany that hang in a corner of the dining room.
And here's a look at one of three photo collections in the living room. This one is made up of random pictures, just a bunch of photos we like.
One of the other two is a collection of impressionist prints of some of the flowers in the gardens at 173. Another is a wonderful collection of family portraits.
Anyway, one day it dawned on me that we have lots (I bet more than a thousand) of pictures of the house itself - interior, exterior, the gardens and fences and trees and shrubs and thought maybe we should just have some of our pictures from 173 printed and create a whole new vignette out of those. A quick order or two from Google Photos and a few days later we had a nice collection of prints ready to go!
Getting To Work!
We got to talking one day and realized that we have a lot of unused frames here at 173 and that maybe we should just use those. However, after collecting all the frames we discovered that most of them were large 8 by 10 frames. We wanted pictures of different sizes, so we decided to use a couple of those and supplement them by picking up some incredibly cheap, and variously sized frames at the Dollar Store. While there was a nice selection of frame styles, there wasn't a lot of color selections. Well, they were so inexpensive we thought, heck - let's just paint a couple just to add some variety and points of interest.
So we picked three of the black frames we wanted to use, and chose three colors. I started out with the lavender, 173's signature red and then orange that was used on the old estate sale, kidney shaped stool that ended up being a plant stand in the back yard this summer.
The lavender and red did fine, but after a couple coats, I found the orange paint just wasn't covering on the frame. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, it struggled covering on the stool, but in this case I gave up on it. I ended up switching to this green color as you can see below.
And you can see the frames turned out pretty nice, And of course, after painting the frames I let them bake in the shop oven for a couple days!
Drumroll Please!
Once all the pictures had come in and the painted frames had some time to dry and cure, it was time to start putting the pictures on the wall. We had no intent of the picture rows being level and perfectly lined up one with another. Rather, the idea was to have them look fairly random but with some sense of order. To help with that, we laid out a drop cloth folded up to be the same size as the area on the wall that we were going to put the pictures. This gave a an opportunity to sort out what would go where, and get a sense of the spacing.
The nice thing about hanging pictures in this casual, less than formal way is that it takes a lot less time trying to get things lined up and perfectly spaced.
Imagine using 4 or 5 different sizes of frames, and just how difficult it'd be to line them up in any real structured way. No way - not for me!
If you look closely, you'll see we chose pictures that were just some of our favorites, even if they aren't incredibly artistic, they were pictures that we've always enjoyed. If you zoom in you'll see we have a selection of different settings from the outside of the house, most of them are flower related but there's a couple of goofy ones in there too, for instance, the rubber duck that floats in the rain barrel. That rubber duck was found in the street a number of years ago and has ever since resided in one of our rain barrels.
And here's a final shot!
Well, that should wrap up the 2023 bathroom update once and for all. Thanks for stopping by and - see ya' next time!
