Transformation, part 1

*I understand you may not care how I went through the process of transforming my dining room. If you are interested in the methods ADHD girl takes to get a wall put together, read along. If not, just scroll down to the bottom for the pictures.

Dining Room Transformation, Part 1

Step one:
Remove all non-essential clothing, jackets, and footwear from dining room. Some of the t-shirts in there are for crafting purposes, but most are for not-shrinking-in-the-dryer purposes. Don’t even get me started on the shoe issue. Mental note: next project- tackling the coat closet.

Step two:
Get everything off the floor and onto the table. This may take 2-3 centuries. Will this ever be accomplished? Pick up multitude of nails from last night’s project that didn’t make it into the makeshift trash bag. Vacuum. Yuck.

Step three:
Stand around for a good bit of time deciding where to put table. Move table. Move table again. Move table back to first position. Sit down and watch a little tv because good lord it is not easy moving a table over and over again by yourself. Stick head out onto patio because you’re sweating from moving the table and it is about 41 degrees outside in Texas at the end of March for heaven’s sake. Play on the internet for a few minutes. Break to go shopping with Mom for a little bit. This is obviously the longest step…

Step four:
Take down Merry Christmas banner. It’s just time. Relocate the Guatemalan nativity set, and Paris print that was on red wall. The trick is finding a new location for both. While the nativity does look quite fabulous on top of the television, it may need a more permanent and reverent place in the house.

Step five:
Go to Walmart and buy a tape measure, so you can make accurate and precise measurements. Laugh at the thought of anything in this process being accurate and precise. Measure out wall and let the fun of designing and placing stuff on the wall begin!

Step six:
Put picture hanger mechanisms on all the backs of the all of the open-back frames you will be using. This is a whipping. Do it while watching a really good movie on tv. Or a really bad movie. On the Lifetime Movie Network. Just sayin’.

Step seven:
The actual meat of the project. The whirlwind of getting things up on the walls. Spend hours (well, lots of minutes) sketching and doing math and figuring out what goes where. Then, just nail it up on the wall. I had extreme success in this endeavor. I rarely, if ever, have success in these kinds of endeavors. This time, I used a level. So out-of-character for me, which is probably why I had this success.

Step eight:
Hang last of the knickknacks. Get into screaming fight with upstairs neighbor. Find out upstairs neighbor is, in fact, a woman. Surprised, call aunt to scream at her since you’re too chicken to go up and give the lady a piece of your mind. And you’re holding a hammer, and we know that won’t turn out well.

Step nine:
Take picture and enjoy. Then watch Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist to complete the long day of hard work.

The finished project:

The empty frames will be filled at a later time. The "do not be afraid" sign was made last night. For so long I denied that I was creative, and was such a perfectionist. I never tried anything, because I was afraid I'd fail. A lot of times I did. I'm finally at a place where I can try things and relax and move on. I want to keep going in that direction.

My favorite parts:
Hanging J:

The bee hangers:




















And, finally, the framed flourish: