Behind These Old Windows is a series I do here, from time-to-time, to share repurposed and handmade ideas while decorating around the house. We live in a 90 year-old house with huge windows and the original wavy glass. They fill every room with character and inspiration.
My girls are notorious for taping their artwork all over the walls, all over the house, in just about every room. And it’s usually not just artwork. It’s special cards, magazine clippings and cut out drawings from special friends. Even after painting the walls in their room a year ago, they looked like they needed it again. And I needed a solution we could all agree on.
I started by shopping around for vintage frames big enough for artwork and to hide all the dirt on the walls from the taping, and more taping, and the smudging oh my! I want them to be able to display their individual styles in their room, which they share. My solution was this – painted vintage frames with a neutral painted grey board attached to the inside of them to highlight their work. I placed them on the walls of their separate sides of the room they share. The oldest girl chose blue frames and the middle girl chose pink.
The oldest girl has the wall with no windows, more space, more scuffs and more stuff to hang. Therefore she got the most frames. To balance that out on the opposite side, the middle girl got the biggest frame plus two old mirrors painted pink that got hung up on her side as well. She uses them when she gets herself ready in the morning, fixing her hair and such. We are a bunch of girls after all!
The boards within the frames were designed to be magnetic boards. I went to great trouble to paint four coats of magnetic paint, covering it with two coats of satin grey paint. After many frustrating attempts to find magnets strong enough and lightweight enough to hold up heavy art paper, nothing could be found. So we went back to the old trusty tape, where this idea came from to begin with.
In the end they worked out nicely. They serve a good purpose, are practical, repurposed, pretty and most definitely functional.
