Admitting Defeat on the Cat Shelves

Happy Monday! Hopefully everyone had a lovely weekend. We got our first storm of the year in Boston — it’s been blessedly warm and snow-free after the winter we had last year, but February was bound to show its true colors sooner or later. After the storm wrapped up on Friday the sun was out and shining all weekend, making for quite a picturesque landscape:

Of course snow or no snow I do my long runs every weekend, so Sunday it was 15 miles on some icy terrain:

Next weekend the high is 19 degrees on Saturday and 14 on Sunday, and I think I will end up doing my long run on the treadmill because that’s just too cold for me to withstand for several hours. So I tried to enjoy the sunshine and warmth while running this weekend. During the winter, the weather dictates my running schedule which in turn dictates my DIY schedule, so it can get a little messy sometimes. But I wouldn’t give up any of it.

Speaking of which, there were some exciting home improvement things afoot this weekend. If you follow us on Instagram (which you should! we are entertaining I promise), you saw that we got our new fridge delivered — more details and photos to come on Wednesday. We also admitted defeat on the cat shelves — after posting about them last week in our “all things fall apart” disaster confessional, I told Sam I was thinking of taking them down and he agreed. They were adorable, but not so adorable that they were worth having up if the cats don’t use them.

I had been procrastinating because I didn’t feel like patching the walls and I didn’t know what else I would put there if anything. But for the holidays, Sam had bought us (and his brother and sister) a print from one of our favorite TV shows, Rick & Morty. It’s a very clever and irreverent animated show that is definitely not appropriate for children and is also way more entertaining than I find most adult animated shows (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I’m looking at you).

I did like the idea of putting up some more personal art, but I also wasn’t sure exactly where so the print was just sitting in the craft room. This weekend it all clicked, and I knew that the narrow wall behind the yellow chair was the right place.

First up was removing the cat shelves. I unscrewed them all, while Murphy looked on from his favorite perch. His gaze seems to say, “I don’t care at all because those shelves were stupid, and yet I’m still angry at you because I never approve of anything you do.” Or I’m projecting.

I was left with piles of very colorful brackets and screws.

I saved the brackets for possible future projects, but went against my hoarder tendencies and parted with the screws. Sometimes I just need to let go of things…

That left me with this beautiful sight:

Patching was pretty quick — I always build it up in my mind as way more onerous than it really is. I just spackled the holes, let everything dry, then sanded and touched up the paint. My advice when touching up is to use a roller to put the paint on so that the texture will match the rest of the wall. In my case I had only a little bit of paint left, but I was able to use a paint stirrer to essentially spoon it onto a small part of the roller and touch up where needed.

To frame the print, I used a frame I already had on hand and my trusty mat cutting kit. I swear by this thing — it was $50, and I’ve used it countless times to cut custom mats for artwork around the house and as gifts. You can find more about how it works in my post about the artwork in our bathroom, and it continues to be really easy.

Then I hammered in a nail and hung up the picture! Unfortunately the print no longer seems to be available on Etsy, but I’m guessing most of you wouldn’t be trying to track down this specific one anyway.

I’m not going to explain the specifics of it (though I do highly recommend the show), but the point is that it’s nice to have some more personal art in the house that means something to us and isn’t totally generic. Plus I do think it works well in the space:

It’s just a small change, but I wanted to keep you posted on the end to the cat shelves odyssey. I like where we’ve landed!

P.S. Sorry in advance if I’m slow to respond to any comments! I’m headed on an overnight retreat for work until Thursday, and won’t have much internet access or downtime. Don’t worry, my fridge post is already ready to go, and Naomi has a super awesome project to share on Friday.