Whiskey is key

I ripped out the carpet in the stairwell a while ago following the great Cain Ate Raw Turkey & Messed the Carpet incident of 2010. (That, by the way, was all the Mister’s fault.) I considered refinishing the wood on the staircase but, as you will soon see, it’s July 18th and the Mister has yet to put away the Christmas decorations. The likelihood of getting the stairs refinished before old age? Nill to not fucking likely.

With my 40th birthday party looming in the very near future, I felt the need to do something with the staircase so that our party guests don’t think we live like backwoods Georgia squids. Tricky as I am, I lured Bryan out of the house this morning with the promise of a free breakfast – and then promptly steered the car to Lowe’s after said breakfast before he could protest too loudly. (He still protested very loudly.)

We picked out a beautiful, plush, dog-hair hiding something-or-other and now Lowe’s has two weeks to lay the new stuff (and Bryan has two weeks to put away the Christmas decorations) so that the gaggle of folks we have invited to our humble abode think that we are “fancy.”

I decided as long as we are spiffing the place up, particularly the staircase, that I’d get around to creating the picture collage I’ve wanted to create on the wall of the stairwell since I bought my new camera and started creating all sorts of pictures that I actually want to display. *Mama loves her pretty, happy, baby Canon Rebel*

Normally I’d just slap the photos up on the wall, but wanting to be fancy ‘n’ all, I decided to actually to create this collage the “right” way. I’ve never been one to successfully lean right on anything. Proof positive…

The tools

Here are all the tools you’ll need to create your Super Fancy Picture Collage:

• roll of big paper
• tape that doesn’t stick to the wall (or the paper either, damnit)
• tape that does stick to the wall (for when you get too frustrated with the tape that doesn’t stick to the wall)
• tape measure
• level
• hammer
• pen/pencil & Sharpie (soaks through the paper onto the wall, FYI)
• picture hangers
• a handy dandy photo printer (once a huge investment – now retailing for a mere $24.99 on Amazon.com)
• scissors (okay, there should be scissors but I lost them by the time I took this picture)
• whiskey

Trust me, when all is said and done, the whiskey is key.

Step 1: Trace your space

Tape your big paper to the wall with the not-sticking-to-the-damn-wall-at-all tape. Tape it together with another piece of big f’ing paper (with tape that does stick to the other paper, the wall and, eventually, your hair) when you discover your big paper ain’t nearly big enough. Cut to the size of the space where you will be hanging your collage.

Step 2: Understand your limitations

I’m only 5’4″ and these pictures are only going so high up on the wall. So, standing on my tippy-toes, I marked the absolute highest spot I could actually hammer a nail into the wall.

Step 3: Carefully remove the paper from the wall & lay on flat surface

By the way, the tape won’t stick to the ground either. Especially when the dog decides that big f’ing paper on the floor is gonna be big f’ing fun.

Step 4: Yell at the dog

Step 5: Lay out your frames

Step 6: Rearrange

Step 7: Rearrange, again…

Step 8: And again…

Step 9: When you’ve settled on a layout, carefully measure the spaces between the frames.

Step 10: Trace around your photos and then tape your big f’ing paper back to the wall

Step 11: Measure to find the center points of your photos

So, it dawned on me that this might be a good time to introduce a level into the equation. You know, to make sure that my lines were straight and all. As I walked into the basement the dog rolled his gazillion pound bone down the wooden staircase which sounded like gunshots (yes, really) in the basement. I nearly died of a heart attack. Death by home decor.

Step 12: Nail your picture hangers right into the trace paper.

Now here’s the tricky part. It’s quite all right to measure to the middle of the line you’ve drawn to find where you are going to insert your picture hanger. Even if the line is a bit larger than frame (you have traced on the outside of the frame, after all) – the middle is the middle.

Unless those bastards at the frame store sold you two fancy frames that actually have two hangers – one on each side of the picture – for stability. Yeah, even if you measure down to the exact distance to where the nail needs to be evenly on both sides (you didn’t by the way), if you’ve traced on the outside of the picture, those hangers are going to be about an inch too far apart. Damnit!

Step 13: Adjust

Take out nails, gouge walls, re-nail, re-hang, find your photos still off-center. Wash, rinse, repeat for about an hour. This is also where you remember that you haven’t even printed out all the pictures you want to frame, nor have you framed any of them. F’ck! This is taking a lot longer than you thought it was going to.

Step 14: Insert photos into frames & hang