Project #2 of that famed flea market run from so many weeks ago has finally come to fruition, folks! Let me tell you, travelling for business does not a happy idea thief make! PHEW! Read on to find out how I’ve created this Stylish Bulletin Board Alternative (with custom decoupage clothespins, I might add)!!

Today I’m ripping off an idea from one of my very favorite catalogs – Wisteria. You see, my office is on a lovely sun porch which makes me feel like I’m working in an aviary (I adore this fact) but leaves little room for getting rid of clutter. So when the space between my lamp and my phone started to look like this ….

… I decided it was high time to find a place for all of my “fun mail”. You know all of the baby announcements, wedding invitations, sweet cards and photos that I just can’t throw away … at least not yet. But I didn’t want a traditional bulletin board that would block the view and the light. When I came across this on Wisteria …

… I knew I had found just the right concept. But I’m not crazy about chickens and $39 seemed a little steep. That is when the hunt for the perfect frame began and by golly if I didn’t find a beaut!??!

All the gory details on what you need to get from flea market to fabulous are just below.

MATERIALS:

Flea Market Frame
Needle-Nose Pliers
Sandpaper
Caulk
Spray Paint (I chose an Heirloom White in Satin finish and Gold Leaf for the clothespins)
Yard Stick
Hammer
Tacks
Floral Wire (mine was wrapped in neutral raffia from the floral department at Michael’s)
Mini Clothespins
Decorative Paper
Mod Podge
Foam Brush
Spray Enamel

STEP 1: PREP YOUR FRAME

I started by giving my frame a nice bath with a damp cloth. Next it was on to removing staples, nails and tacks with my handy needle nose pliers and below a screwdriver to pry off the name plate. I even sanded down the back of my frame since it was going to be hung on a window but if yours is going on the wall then why worry with that?!? My frame was super old so we put a little bit of caulk in the corners just to smooth things out a bit.

STEP 2: COAT THAT BABY WITH PAINT

Not much to say here except follow the directions on the spray paint can! And even though I’m painting at night here, the second and third coats had to happen during the day to get a nice, even spray on all of those little nooks and crannies. I’d like to thank my good friend John Deere and my husband for collaborating to make me this fancy painting platform.

STEP 3: MEASURE FOR YOUR “CLOTHES LINES”

I ended up spacing mine 10″ apart but it’s worth noting that I think it looks best to have the top one about an inch and a half from the top of the frame (it looks like 2 inches here but see how that lip of the frame takes up 1/2 an inch – that will make a big difference in the look). Wouldn’t want to waste a whole bunch of space up there but wouldn’t want it crowded either. Mark where your tacks will go on the backside of the frame.

STEP 4: CUT, WRAP & NAIL THE LINE

(Just don’t Walk the Line … that’s never fun.)

This floral wire wrapped in a raffia-like material that I was using was heavy-duty stuff.  I needed the needle nose pliers to manipulate it, no doubt. The idea is to create a little loop that you’ll wrap around the tack on one side and get that hammered in. Then, cut the line so it’s just slightly beyond your marked spot on the other side of the frame. You’ll use the wrapping action to wrap it just tight enough that the wire is taught. You can always give your pliers a little bit more of a turn if you need it a hair tighter. Pull, pull, pull and then nail in place. Here’s a shot of those tacks (available at your home improvement store) as well as what it looks like to wrap the wire around it.

Use your pliers to make a little loop that a tack can just barely fit through. If your raffia stuff starts to fray like this did, trim and secure with a piece of scotch tape. It’ll be on the back of your frame anyway.

Then slide that tack in there:

And nail that puppy in place (and I mean the tack, not actually the puppy! see my old boy snoozing in the background of the pic above – such a sweet guy he his):

You will notice that all of that care that I took to sand the back of the frame and paint it got just totally demolished by my hammer. Oh well. Our neighbors will forgive the ugly view. Oh and I suppose you could use twine and spare yourself all of this wrapping and pulling taught. But to me, it just seemed like the wire would provide a more sturdy foundation for the mail and keep things from tipping this way and that. I like to think my selection makes for a tidier presentation in the end but who really knows. If you’ve got the twine already, give it a whirl!

STEP 5: HANG ‘ER UP

Forgot to get a pic of this step but I happened to already have some hooks hanging in the metal frame of my sun porch for a Christmas stained glass window so I used some fishing wire to loop the frame to the hooks. If you are hanging your creation on a wall, you can easily add a picture hanger. Just choose the kind with the little jagged teeth that doesn’t use a wire.

STEP 6: SECURE YOUR GOODIES TO THE CLOTHESLINES

Clothespins are easy enough to find but with all of that fancy carving, a plain one just seemed BOR-ING. I thought of just giving them a coat of paint and calling it a day. But then I remembered seeing these cute clothespins on Etsy:

You can buy those at The Papered Crown on Etsy if you like. They are only like $8.

When I remembered those, I realized I could do anything I wanted to complement my new frame remake. So I purchased some mini clothespins, sprayed them down with a little gold spray paint (mostly just on the sides so there would be a little shine) and then decoupaged them with this cute, muted, floral craft paper that I found at Michael’s. Here they are on the tray drying after their decoupage treatment.

Kind of cute, huh??!?! And I had never decoupaged before but let me tell you it is really easy and really, really fun. I just used these instructions. I pretty much feel like a 1960′s housewife but I might be hooked on the decoupage now. Eeeks! We’ll see if it becomes a new blog category. HA!

So let’s have a few final shots of my Wisteria rip off before we close down this post. Hooray for cute, custom, DIY organization!

Will and I decided that we would pull that rack down and recreate it later to better match the casual elegance we are hoping for in our house.  And last week, we finally got around to doing just that.  Here’s our new coat rack:

It turns out that this is a great feature to have in the downstairs hallway of our house.  For starters, as is typical with any home built in 1930, ours is light on the closets (at least downstairs).  And the closet that we had designated as our coat closet is inconveniently situated behind a rocking chair.  We rationalized that the rocker would be easy to move for access to the closet.  But what has happened instead is that the rocker has BECOME our closet … where we drape jackets, hats, scarves, the dry cleaning, dog leashes … you get the picture.  Our hallway coat rack has really helped to corral all of that clutter. And what else is a hallway good for anyway?  Might as well be for hanging coats.

How’d we do it?  Glad you asked:

putty knife

STEP 1: MEASURE AND CUT

First things first you want to measure the length of your coat rack.  We were butting ours up against the frame of 2 doors which made finishing it off pretty easy.  If you don’t have 2 door frames (or even a door frame and a corner wall) between which to position your coat rack, you’ll want to consider how you’ll cap off the corners.  If using trim, you’ll need a miter saw to get the look right.  But we didn’t have to worry about that because the door frames helped us out!

STEP 2: AFFIX THE 1×4 TO THE WALL

We were working with a plaster wall so my hubby used special screws intended just for that purpose.  Whatever is right for your wall, make sure you sink your screws so that you can come back later and fill over the screw head with wood filler.  Will also popped a few nails in the 1×4 using his finish nailer for good measure.

STEP 3: AFFIX THE DECORATIVE TRIM

We chose this particular trim because we thought it echoed the patterns in the iron hooks. You could choose just about anything that is intended to help finish off an edge.  The best thing to do is to hold it up against your 1×4 while you are still at the store and see how it looks.  You’ll use the finish nailer to attach this trim.  This is an important step. You don’t want to use a regular old hammer and nails for this task because you will dent the design in your decorative wood. Not cool! So rent or borrow the finish nailer if you don’t have one and enjoy the rush of using a pneumatic power tool!

STEP 4: SINK YOUR NAILS

Now you’ll want to go along and sink any of the nails that the finish nailer didn’t sink, so that the heads are just below the surface of the wood.

STEP 5: FILL, PUTTY AND CAULK

Get your wood filler and fill in the holes where the screws were installed.  If you see any funky knots in the wood, you’ll want to fill those with wood filler too. Next you want to use some painter’s putty to fill in the tiny holes where the nails are  The smother you can get the surface, the more professional and like-it’s-always-been-there your coat rack will look.  Finally, use your caulk and caulk gun to fill in any cracks between the 1×4 and the trim or between the new rack and the door frame.

STEP 6: SAND SMOOTH

Once everything has dried, come behind and gently sand to make sure everything is smooth.

STEP 7: TAPE, PRIME & PAINT

Next you’ll want to tape off the wall around your wood installation and apply a coat of primer.  Kilz is good for making sure that any knots in your wood don’t show up later as dark spots.  Once that’s dry, apply 2 coats of paint.  We chose the same color as our trim but the possibilities there are really endless.

STEP 8: INSTALL THE HOOKS

We found our hooks on eBay.  I think we paid $20 for all 4.  But there are lots of hooks out there if you get to looking. The web is a great place (but make sure you comparison shop) as is the flea market. Nashvillians, there is a vendor at our monthly flea market that has every kind of iron hook you can imagine – from kid-appropriate to ranch-appropriate to more Victorian like ours.  We chose 4 and spaced them equally apart on the board.  Will pre-drilled the holes and then just screwed them right in with some brown screws (due to the stellar price, the screws were not included so we just picked those up at Home Depot.

And ta-daaaaaa!  A great place to hang coats and wrangle general clutter.  How do you like our fancy coat rack, inspired by the much simpler one that greeted us when we bought our house? Those comments make me feel loved, ya know!

#1. She works for Gibson.
#2. He is a FABULOUS musician.
#3. They have great taste.

Here are some of their fancy wall guitars:

I mean these cats are the real mccoy. Do Will and I boast these same credentials? Absolutely not. Perhaps I should revise my credits here. I’m going to credit this rip off to the city of Nashville. By virtue of the fact that we live in Music City USA, we feel justified having a guitar hanging in our house. Ok that’s not a great reason either. But Will is signed up to take some lessons and the guitar was my Christmas gift to him. It’s not a fancy guitar. As a matter of fact, it’s the second cheapest one that Yamaha makes and came with a crappy lessons DVD. But still, I’ve hung cheaper, less personal things on my walls in the name of decor. So here she is:

In case you are interested, the hanger we used is available here. I have no idea if it’s a good one but ten bones got my hubby’s new hobby up off the floor. So yes please!

City of Nashville (ahem, Kasey & Justin) rip off accomplished! Do you think we are posers? Tell me in the comments. Comments make me feel loved!

Well, I’ve got a great idea that’s a double rip-off.  My friend Katie Nalley had 3 or 4 years worth of holiday cards neatly organized with binder rings sitting in a long, wooden bowl on her kitchen table when I visited her over the holidays.  I thought it was such a great idea that I just had to ask about it and it turns off she learned the trick from her mother, Cindy!  I love the Meeker/Nalley clan so I’m super excited to be ripping off one of their time-honored traditions!

It’s easy as pie.  At the end of the holiday season when you are packing up our Christmas decor, all you do is punch a hole in the corner of each of your cards.  You go on down to your local office supply store and pick up a few binder rings.  Mine happen to be multi-colored but plain old silver would do just as well.  Loop those cards through there (most have the date so no extra step of dating them needed) and toss the lot in with your Christmas decorations.  The following year, dump them in a basket, tray, or large bowl and set them near a comfy chair ripe for reminiscing.  And, it’s a great way to make absolutely sure you reciprocate cards year after year as well.

So Meeker/Nalley Rip-Off Accomplished!