Designing around Doors Galore
As a refresher, this is where we left off. Boring beige walls, boob lights, and empty, awkward negative space created by the placement of the doors and utility panels.
Awhile ago, I stumbled across this beautiful piece at World Market (which has sadly been discontinued) and thought, “that shouldn’t be too hard to replicate.” I filed the idea away for future use.
I whipped up a couple of reclaimed wood backgrounds for the pieces that were swimming around in my head. There was quite a bit of capiz left over from the materials I used to make new light fixtures for the hallway, so I laid them out on the wood and played with them until I came up with something I liked. That spectacular dragonfly was a homemade Christmas present from my brother-in-law. It was hard to see the wings when hung up outside as originally intended, so I got his permission to repurpose it for indoor wall art.
I stained both pieces using dark walnut by Minwax and used industrial adhesive to glue everything in place.
A few months prior, I snagged all the starfish and sand dollars at estate sale with the intention of turning them into art - I’m a sucker for beach-inspired décor. I pulled out my stash and decided to make a simple piece using the largest sand dollar.
Alright, it was a fake sand dollar, but it’s still pretty. I pulled out a frame that I found on clearance at Hobby Lobby, removed the glass, added a background of scrapbook paper to make the sand dollar pop, and glued everything in place. It felt good to have one entire wall figured out.
The other side was a bit trickier because the placement of the utility panels. After months of half-heartedly playing with layouts on graph paper, I finally came up with a plan. Both pieces of African art were given to me while living overseas. I created simple frames for them using more reclaimed wood and the same dark walnut stain to tie everything together.
From the opposite perspective:
For the finishing touch, I spray painted two thrift-store-find frames in a glossy white and inserted two of my favorite pictures. The top one was taken in the Bishop Arts District in Dallas. Such a fun place full of happy memories. The lower one was taken during the trip to Paris we took to celebrate our ten-year wedding anniversary. It was his idea to “take a cute picture in front of the Eiffel Tower.”🥰 I had just gotten a subscription to Photoshop and couldn’t resist playing with it to enhance these photos. It was especially useful to get rid of all the pesky other people cluttering up the Champs de Mars. Yeah, we didn’t actually have the space in front of the Eiffel Tower all to ourselves.
Now we have a hallway that isn’t a total bummer to walk down. Makes the journey a little more enjoyable.
And for contrast . . . .
