I have been mulling over what I want to do in my hallway. Its average width but it has the circuit breaker box there and it’s an eye sore. I thought about covering it with a picture but it would need to be pretty honkin’ big and would look out of place. You would also still be able to see the box cover because it’s a hallway. I also thought about a shadow box with a little depth so it would be flush on the wall, but I don’t collect chach-kas so what’s the point. It would be too kitschy.
The best thing to do is to hide it in plain site and use it as part of what you are creating. A mural came to mind. I have done that before. It took days, and although I loved it, I will not do that again.
Then I got the idea for a picture wall. Lots of pictures all over the wall with tons of low profile frames. The collage of rectangles might hide it and then I realized I STILL cant cover it because I can put a picture nail in the metal cover. I mean… its metal…what sticks to metal?
MAGNETS!
Once I figured that out, the rest came into place. I would paint the entire wall with magnetic paint and then paint it again with a nice wall color and get a ton of magnetic picture frames to stick on the wall. Since they are magnets it will be easy to swap out pictures just like people do on a refrigerator.
I went to the store to get the paint and was appalled that it was 18 dollars a quart and it only covered 16 SQUARE FEET! Doing the math in my head, I figured the entire wall, which was small, would still cost about ninety dollars to do with the undercoating alone. That’s too pricey for me, so I only bought one quart and would tape off and area and cover as much as I could. The resized area I wanted was about 35 square feet. Resigned to get two quarts, I still only got one and was please to see how far I could stretch it. I have paint to spare so I may enlarge the area yet.
To finish the area off, I got the idea of hanging a digital picture frame on the wall as well. Its nestled among the other pictures and is high enough that people wont bang into it when they walk down the hallway.
I have not painted the top coat yet because I think I’m going to use the rest of the magnetic paint on the wall to make it as ‘sticky’ as possible because I can see some of the frames curling a little and I’m concerned because the paint is black and any top coat will take away from the magnetic quality of the wall.
Personally, I think the wall is a success. At this point no one has swapped out pictures (Perhaps because I don’t have the extras near the wall yet) but people walk to the bathroom and stop to look and then become entranced watching the slideshow of the digital picture frame. I think its cool that people hang out in my hallway. It has made good use of a space designed only for travel. Now it’s a living piece of my home.
