Picture Feature !

When we renovate the house, we have made plans for every nook and corner of the house. Of course after moving in and using the space, some plans changed due to practicality. But overall we are quite on track. As we live here, we have small projects here and there... and the one that involved lots and lots of planning, research and preparation will be none other than, the picture wall! :D

First, we need as many picture frames as possible. It's not expensive to buy, but is still a sum of money to buy 10 picture frames... and because I really love using unwanted things.. I went on picture frame search for few monthsss.... Once I see one, I keep them in a bag. Of course I look out for reasonably priced picture frames in Ikea too.

After I have sufficient frames, I read online on tips about the ways to prepare for a picture wall. Because it involves creating holes on the wall, I want to make sure that we really think it through!

So what I did was laying all the frames on the floor. I measure the wall, it's about 9 feet wide, so I just tried to space out the frames. Here's first attempt.

And then 2nd attempt.

The 2 white Ikea Ribba frames on the left are house warming gift from my friend Wei Chee. She asked what we need, I told her I want white frames. She bought us two. Next, the frames for 3 pictures is a discounted frames we bought from Ikea. The white frame is not on offer, so I decided that I can paint them white myself. :P The black one was a wedding present from my cousin Wan Chin, she didn't attend our wedding but the present came. :) The grey chopping board was just an idea of where we can place big frames that we haven't yet purchase. The other frames are old frames from my grandma's house except one which was given by my boss in previous company when I resigned. The small frames, both were Joshua's christmas presents during uni days.
 
Here's 3rd attempt. I started planning which photos to be printed for which frames, and realised there're too many portrait frames, we need more landscape frames. So I need to arrange again.....

Finally found time to arrange frames again on a Sunday evening. Not too long after I got my iphone 4s end of October. This picture is taken with my new phone. :) :) :)

This arrangement gives more landscape frames and it looks more... comfortabe.. Not too rigid, not too cramp. Also, you can see that I have prepared 2 frames, the snoopy and the old 71 number plate. :D They just need to be painted white and then they can be displayed immediately. Hehe.

I planned which photo for each frame. Using Microsoft Paint helped me imagine how our wall will look like.

Now we need to print photos. Planning to bring to a photo shop but............................................

One day, Joshua said, "Hey there's PC fair in Midvalley, can we go? Lets see if we can buy cheap speakers for the TV?"  We went. And these are what we bought.

(1) RM90 speakers to be used for our TV
(2) RM20 mouse for my blacky (lenovo laptop)
(3) RM399 canon printer which can be used for photo printing
(4) A4 size and 4R photo paper which I can't remember the price..

In this post, I meantioned we knew about this Canon printer back in June 2012, but we were told that it cost RM800! We thought we will only invest in it in 2013... but to our surprise it was half off at PC Fair, coupled with goodies like an 8gb thumb drive!

That Sunday itself, after service, I dive straight into frames painting. We bought a can of white spray paint earlier when we purchased the red paint for the steel cabinet.

I thought the can of paint can finish all the frames but... it went empty while the last 3 frames still needed more coats of paint... I had to used the leftover paint from painting our door frames to finish up the last 3 frames. It wasn't the same white colour and the finishing is also more rough... :(

While I was finishing up the paint, it rained... and got heavier and heavier.. I had to bring all the frames into drum room for the to dry overnight.

Monday night, Joshua set up the printer and we started printing our favourite photos!

This is the first picture we printed, the bottom of this photo was printed first, we thought the colour of the printer is not fixed properly, because it looked so blur! Until the whole piece came out we realised it was actually a misunderstanding, we totally love the output. :D

In our new Ikea Ribba frame. :D

Printing more..

Now we are printing 5R size.. have to print on the A4 photo paper and cut..

I wish one day we will have a paper cutter which will make all these easier.

It is a wonderful feeling to these.. after so much planning and preparations.

Spent few nights editing some raw photos, printing out, putting into frames. And then research on how to hang the frames on the wall. Some frames did not have the hook at the back for wall hanging so I took some time to think through how to prep them.

On the Deepavali week Wednesday, we bought the hooks and wires from hardware shop. Stayed up till 1am to prepare all the frames. And then I did this.

Preparing rough paper in the size of each frames and stick on the wall. This helps to make sure we don't drill the hole at the wrong position....

With this, we went to bed. I told myself if the next morning I still think this arrangement is good to go, then we will drill the holes by evening. :)

And we did that at 4pm. The first frame that was up was the middle frame. We started from the middle so that we can adjust the gaps accordingly. We hang them 5 inches from the ceiling and approximately 2 inches away from other frames.

We measured the wire at the back of the frame and draw a cross on the rough paper, to indicate where the nail should be so that the picture can fall into this position. ;)

Yeayyyy 70% done!

Measuring, marking.....

Drill on the paper....

Pull off the paper and drill again. Put in wall plug and then screw in the nail. And hang.

This is how crazy our work scene was. The whole table was a mess and the floor was full of cement dust too.

For the small frames, Joshua tried nailing on the wall. We found it so easy... compared to drill. So he also used nailing method for our last frame, the snoopy frame. :)

Ta dah!!!!!! Finally all done!!

The 3in1 frame was giving us the most problems. We couldn't adjust it to be the same height as other frames. And half way through the hook came off. :( So after repairing the hook, we decided to leave it just the way it is, slightly lower than other frames. We didn't hang the no.71 frame up because we think this arrangment is more balanced. We put the no.71 on our bookshelf, which is located just on the left side of this picture wall.

Final product. :) :) So happy!

Cleaning up, vaccum the floor, clear & wipe the table.. all in all 2 hours.

Our pre-wedding photos, wedding card, wedding day photos, honeymoon photo, Korea trip photo, favourite family trip photo, memorable snoopy from an old t-shirt and dried autumn leave from Jeju Island... :) :)  All these are finally on this wall..

And the best part is, I can change the photos anytime I want because I can print it myself. :D Already have ideas to print more candid wedding day photos to replace some on the wall...... this is becoming my new hobby.....