Unplanned Update

An unplanned project inserted itself onto my to-do list. Speaking of lists, I have a rather long one of things that have fallen off the walls of my home.  You might remember the big disaster I wrote about in this post. There were several more but let's get on with the latest.

This is what the top shelf of my bookcase in the foyer looked like a couple weeks ago.
Sometime, when I was away from the house, the first big L fell from the wall.  I discovered it sometime later when I returned and walked to the front door to pick up the mail.
Did it break, you ask?  Well of course it did.  It broke into two pieces and was a little dinged up but...I was sure I could glue it together and I did.  Then I confidently hung it back up with command strips and walked into the kitchen and CRASH, BANG, BOOM, it was back on the floor in three pieces.

This time it ripped some paint off the wall and I decided it just wasn't meant to be.

I was not Laughing out loud, that was for sure!

SO NOW WHAT?

My niece said something about some clocks we had seen at an art display set to the time in various  time zones, but using obscure cites vs the usual Paris, London, Rome thing.  I thought this would be fun and thus began the search.

Cutting some circles from paper helped me to determine that 12 inches in diameter would be ideal for six clocks. I began searching for reasonably priced clocks. I searched stores from Big Lots, to Bed Bath and Beyond, to Target and Walmart.  There were more, but you get the idea.  What I found was either a little too small, or a little too cutesy, or too costly or too whatever.  I was about to give up and then I saw...

these!

I really thought they could work if I just used four.  I liked (very much) that the background color was the same color as my wall.  I loved the idea that the frame was gray and not black, and I thought the Roman numerals might add to the quirkiness of the whole idea.  But in the end I just had to listen to that voice in my head that kept telling me...

"Four oversized circles conflict with the large round mirror next to them!"  That voice was right,  The proportions were just wrong and no matter how I wanted it to be okay--it wasn't okay and it was never going to be okay.  So I returned the clocks.  I must admit I tried to find a place somewhere in the house to use one, but I gave up on that as well.

I decided to work on the beat up wall, but after going through every can of gray paint in my stash, I could not come up with the color of the wall.  Yes, yes, I do label but sometimes when you are in the thick of a remodel something like that slips through the cracks.  I have the color of the other walls but the wall behind the shelves is different from the wall behind the mirror and they are both slightly different than the other three walls.  See how easy it would be to forget to document one color choice.  This is also why I document much of this in my posts.  It's so I will have a second reference if I get desperate.  Well, I checked back to posts of the foyer re-do and, alas, I didn't document that particular paint color.  I'm thinking now I might have mixed a couple colors of paint to find one that worked.  I do remember it was difficult getting it right because the window on the right cast more light on that side of the mantle, so the same paint on the left looked totally different than the right,  That's it!  TMI.

Let me just say, I put that off for another day.

I decided that maybe I had something else that would move this project along.  A few months ago I found a painting at a yard sale and it spoke to me.

I had already decided I wanted it in a different frame.

Someone had given me this one and it was the perfect size.  Just not the best color for this painting.

So I painted it and then added a dark green wash over the paint and rubbed it back a bit.

Then it sat on the floor waiting for the right spot to open up.

I believe this will be just fine until something else comes along.

The painting is off the floor and I don't have a blank top shelf.

(It also overs up the pulled off paint sections.)

There is one more anecdote involving this painting.   I had propped it on the shelf while standing on a step stool.  I got down and stood back to take it in.  I had it off to the left and decided it might look better centered, so I got back on the stool, slid it over, and looked down before stepping off the stool.

Boom!!! It fell forward and the glass hit me square on the head, my arm flew up in an attempt to catch it, but remember, I was not on the floor.  I made a quick decision to let it careen to the floor vs  getting off balance and breaking a hip.  Fortunately the glass did not break.  The wire stretched across the back kept the glass from flying out.  There were some dings to the frame and the floor but all in all, it could have been so much worse.