Making a Picture Frame Bigger Without Actually Making It Bigger (in which I use a power tool and don’t die)

March 25, 2013 by Anne 7 Comments

The title of this post will hopefully make sense by the time I finish the post, if I’ve done my job right. And. Disclaimer. Probably no one will ever have this same problem that we did, so this pseudo tutorial is wildly unnecessary, but still. I USED A POWER TOOL and that in and of itself is blogworthy.

Here is the scenario last Thursday before dinner. I had just come from the thrift store, where I’d picked up a fairly nice wrapped-canvas painting (fake) for $3.99. I had just planned on putting it on the last remaining 5% of wall space that isn’t covered by anything in our teeny apartment, when we realized that I had a perfectly good frame that was in desperate need of something (anything) in it. See it here on the right (from this post)? Yeah, you can’t really miss it.

I had actually, the day before, cut out a piece of foam board in order to convert the frame into a chalkboard. But the new canvas represented a new, intriguing possibility. But it was not without this tiny little REALLY IMPORTANT problem:

Yeah. The painting was about a half inch too big on one side. I was all like, “well, we could do major surgery and make the painting smaller” but that sounded like a LOT OF WORK and NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to do well. But then my brilliant husband suggested that I just carve out a bit of the frame. He pretends that he is not interested in my crafty endeavors, but secretly he loves it and is very invested, I think.

So. I got out my Christmas present generic-Dremel for its inaugural run. And since Ken was hungry since it was now past our normal dinnertime, he got to work on making food. We all have our special skills.

Of course, what with the lack of a workshop in our tiny apartment, I had to do this all in the living room.

Magically, Ken’s idea worked like a charm and I retained all of my fingers.

Here you can see how the picture now fits into the frame. This isn’t technically correct, but we’re pretty thrilled that our zany idea worked.

We popped our new artwork up on the wall where we’d had the frame but quickly realized we had a problem with that location…the horizon was hidden below the TV and it looked just like a painting of some sky and a bush (the top of the tree). So I spent the next 4 hours (give or take) moving the pictures around and around and around. We’d eaten by this time, so both of us were less hangry (hungry/angry), and Kenny was a good sport of me standing on a chair directly in front of the TV during the NCAA basketball games that night. I found myself a good man.

I rather like the new arrangement, and this shot of blue sky and greenery was just what this fancy gallery wall needed. And yes, we’ve determined that the plastic birds are staying. 🙂

Linking up here.

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