Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

When we first had this conversation about using a tapestry as art for the large wall in our bedroom, I was worried that you all would think it would look too “dorm.” I was thrilled when you were on board and I could share the one that Brad and I eventually agreed to buy! (affiliate link – read our policies)

Once it arrived (in the age of Amazon Prime shipping, waiting for Etsy deliveries can be frustrating, but so worth it) I was thrilled to see that it totally lived up to my expectations. I almost texted Sage a picture but then realized that she’s seen a picture on this very blog and a different picture of it would really be no difference to her. But, really, in person it was gorgeous: a great flowy texture and very saturated.

Of course, the next challenge was making it actually not look like a college dorm. I figured that was all in the hanging. Slapping it up there with thumb-tacks and spritzing it with Febreeze would probably be the wrong vibe. Instead, as I’m trying to bring more natural wood tones into the room, I decided to hang it with a chunky wooden strip along the top.

So while Sage got up to some real DIY, I took a weekend to visit an awesome flower farm with my mom (more on that soon!), worked on painting a bazillion divided light window sashes, and hung my tapestry. I realize what follows isn’t a ground-breaking tutorial, but it did work and may be helpful to someone!

I started by laying it out against a pine 1×2 that I had chilling out in my basement-of-disaster-doom.

If I had the choice I would have gotten a nicer piece of wood, but I had this on hand and wanted to use it up. I allowed for a bit of stretch in the fabric and then cut the piece down to size.

I gave it a good sanding and then stained it. I started with a coat of Minwax Golden Pecan but after seeing it on I realized the pine would still be too light next to the red oak we have on the bedroom shelves. To compensate, I did a second coat which was a mixture of Golden Pecan and some leftover Cherry stain that I had on hand, which darkened and warmed it up a bit. I then coated with a clear semi-gloss poly.

Once that dried, I used a staple-gun to attach the tapestry to the back. I put the staples through the hem so that they wouldn’t cause the fabric to pucker and show in the way it hangs.

Also, to keep an even tension throughout, I started by attaching the ends, then hit one staple in the middle, and divided down from there. I figured that would keep it nice and even.

I then attached four little saw-tooth hangers along the length of it and put it up on the wall!

I totally love the colors. I think the wood piece along the top is a good scale for the size of the tapestry and helps it look more “grown up.” That, combined with the more mature image, muted tone-on-tone color scheme, and lack of empty pizza boxes helps it not give off the dorm vibe.

It looks straight there, right? Well, it is close. I think this picture totally sums up my approach to DIY:

SUPER close to straight. You really can’t tell that it isn’t perfect by looking at it, so there is no way I’m messing with more nail holes in the wall just to make the level go to 0.0.

I’m really crazy about it. Although there is more to do on this room, it is helping me see how much I will love it once it is done. Even though you can see the taped, unpainted windows in this photo, I still think it is just beautiful.

I think it gives a good sense of the direction I’m going, although there is still a bunch more to do! Here is where we (still) are:

~~Hang shelves in the corner~~
~~Buy and/or DIY matching bedside tables (ideally with loads of dresser-like storage)~~
Buy and/or DIY a bench for the end of the bed (ideally with storage)
~~Buy a new rug and bedding~~
Buy and install new overhead light (PROGRESS!)
~~Decide between lamps or scones for beside the bed~~, and buy/install
Buy and/or DIY several pieces of art for the walls (PROGRESS!)
Hang window treatments
~~Fix gaping hole in the wall by installing grate~~
Finally paint wood window sashes (PROGRESS!)

Looking forward to knocking some of these out and finishing this room! (UPDATED to add – check out my finished bedroom here!)

Sharing at Home Matters and The Creative Gallery.

Happy Monday! We hope you enjoyed learning more about the home renovation adventure our tiny blogger pals are embarking on — we can’t wait to see what totally unique and not the least bit bloggeriest projects they come up with!

In the meantime, we’re here with one of our favorite recurring features: the truth behind the photo. We know that you consider us to be awe-inspiring photographers, so every once in awhile we like to get real and show you what goes on behind the scenes for us to get those incredible shots. Sometimes it involves climbing out windows:

And other times strategic cropping and zooming:

Today we figured we’d share some behind-the-scenes shots from the tiny house, which is surprisingly hard to photograph.

When first photographing the house, we took two sets of photos: one with a DSLR meant to get good photos, and one with a camera phone meant to get misleading “this is a real house” photos for our cruel “we bought a house!” post. Neither set was easy to capture. The DSLR photos involved a lot of lying on the ground using a pile of books as a tripod, since Sage’s tripod isn’t short enough to get a floor-level shot:

And the camera phone photos involved a lot of Naomi wedging her hand and phone inside the house to try to take photos as though she was a tiny person touring the house.

Who knew it took so much work to get a photo like this?

Here we are combining techniques — Naomi taking a photo with her phone from inside the house while Sage photographs from outside the house. I guess this is what we look like to those tiny bloggers.

The whole thing involved a lot of fending off the cat, who really wanted to get involved with the project:

Overall, it was more of a workout than one might imagine photographing a dollhouse to be….

In other news, here are a few behind-the-scenes shots from a post we’ll be sharing next week:

In case you’re wondering what the heck is going on here, please take a moment to harken back to that post we did last spring where we gave our dear friend Stephanie (who named Plaster & Disaster) advice on making over her patio. You probably assumed that she thought our advice was terrible and that’s why we never circled back, but it turns out she was actually working on it all along! So there.

On Friday we went over to her place to photograph the fantastic results, and also to photograph ourselves photographing the results. So meta. Here’s one that’s either really artsy or just bad form, depending on how low your standards are.

Next week we’ll share photos of the actual patio transformation, but in the meantime we hope you’ve been totally sated by photos of us taking photos. It’s fascinating, we know.