We are SOOO Crafty (Part 2)

Okay... So here's how it works:

I (Michael) get Saturday's off. Haylee does not regularly get Saturday's off. So I thought I'd do something to surprise her while she was off at work.

I was scanning hgtv.com/ratemyspace and found a backing for pictures.... Like... a wall panel that the pictures are on.

We had talked about how our living room pictures don't offer much contrast, as you can see in this "before" picture:

Perfect opportunity to surprise Haylee!!!

I read that the guy who posted his design on hgtv stretched some fabric over a frame and hung the pictures on that. I didn't see any instructions, but I figured it must be easy enough. So I drove off to Home Depot to buy me some lumber. And a saw. I made it out of there for under $20. I bought an $8 saw and 5 pieces of 8 ft 1"x2", each under $2.

I took the pictures off the wall, moved our coffee table out of the living room, and lined the pictures up on the rug to see how I would like them. I used the rug as my square, since it has some convenient lines. I then laid the lumber down to get an idea for spacing and size.

Time to cut the lumber. It was ONLY around 105°, but it's monsoon season, so the "dry heat" made me sweat like a pig. I went outside and sawed away. I got two 6 foot pieces and seven 2 foot pieces. Then, I used our awesome staple gun and went to town. Each joint has at least 10 staples holding it together. The corner ones have around 16.

Around this time, Haylee called. She was done with work. She asked what I had done all day. I bet she thought I'd say something like "watching the olympics" or "took a nap". I said "I have a surprise for you. Hurry home."

Now, I knew that the fabric wasn't on there, but I figured that I needed some womanly advice in picking the fabric so that it would match okay. So I just placed the "ladder" in its appropriate spot on the wall. She walked in and saw this:

Her exact line was "I don't know how I feel about that."

So much for romantic surprise.

After I explained my full vision and inspiration to her, she agreed to go pick some fabric with me. We ran off to JoAnn's and found some pretty awesome green stuff that was on double clearance. We paid $2 per yard, 3 yards. So a total of around $6.40. This brought our project total up to $25 (including a saw, around $17 without the saw).

I started stapling the fabric on. Finally, it was time to put the nails in the frame to hang the pictures.

I had this all laid out on the floor. I asked Haylee to take a look at what I had done. She was sleeping. I woke her up and she said, "yeah. Looks great." She then rolled over. She didn't even look.

So I said "whatever. I'll surprise her by getting it all done before she wakes up."

So I placed the nails. This was the final output:

While I was nailing these on, I figured it looked pretty darn good. Haylee would be so surprised that her husband is so handy and romantic.

Haylee, upon awakening, asked "why are they not centered correctly?"

As you can see, there is more panel below the pictures than above them. And now our birch framed smaller pictures are not vertically centered with the larger white frames. (Compare with the "before" pic)

So much for surprises.