Dining room photo wall done!

As I am sure you recall, one of the projects on my list back in September (can you even believe it's October??) was the dining room wall.  As much as I loved having the colourful chaos of the kids' artwork, I really wanted something cleaner and more relaxing to look at.

While home in New Brunswick, I took a few photos out my bedroom window looking down the river, and had an idea for a small series.  I ended up taking a photo every day of the same view, at different times of day and in different weather.  Out of a ton of photos, I eventually chose the following six:

I had to do a bit of photoshop tweaking to get the exact same ratio of sky to water and the same zoom, but I didn't touch the colours or add any filters.  With hindsight I should have lightened them and maybe added some filters to bump up the sunshine or the mist or the grey, but I didn't think they would print as dark as they did.

I sent them off to my printer buddy Dan (the man) Thompson, who printed them on photo paper just the right size for my Ikea frames.  Then, while my boys did crafts, I framed them and attempted to hang them straight.  Tell me, why, oh why does Ikea give you SO MUCH wire with the frames?  I had to find my wire cutters, of course sliced and punctured myself with the sharp ends, and said all kinds of nasty things in my head as I tried to twist them to just the right height. Yes, I know there are gloves for that, but have you ever been so impatient to finish a project that you skip the rational and logical safety steps?  I seem to do it a lot.

They are a bit more tonally identical than I thought they would be, but all in all I am kind of thrilled with them (can you be 'kind of' thrilled?)  They look clean and sharp with the white frames (which are mostly straight and level - lathe and plaster is my nemesis).  Plus the blue hue echoes the blue of the painting we have up in the living room (not pictured).  And of course, they are all photos of a view I love to bits, and it is nice to look out at them from the kitchen and pretend I am home again.

Being a lazy blogger, I didn't style them beautifully or give you an idea of how they work with the whole open space, but I will in a future post.  Also, I see now that the bottom one is crooked.  Sigh.  Oh well.  The great things is, this was a super-inexpensive project since a) I framed my own photos b) I have a printer buddy c) I already had the frames.  Score one for the budget!  And there goes one more project - hooray!