Quick custom wall frame

I took a photo of a place that is special to me and had it enlarged, but was having trouble finding a suitable frame for it. I got tired of it being stuck to the wall with BluTak so, I made a frame. This was one of those projects that went from idea to completion in the span of an evening.

This is a really simple little thing that you can knock together in less than an hour, and it's really cheap. The photo or poster is held in place by strong magnets. I picked these up at Home Depot for about $1.69 for 12. All of the other materials were already on hand.

For mine, I used scrap 1x2 furring strips. Simply measure the dimensions of your poster, and use a hand mitre saw to cut four pieces with the ends at 45 degree angles; the angles should open away from each other on each piece of wood - each of your side pieces will make a trapezoid shape, not a parallelogram. The length of the wood on the short side of each parallelogram should correspond to the the size of your opening.

Cutting the 45 angles with my little mitre box.

My photo is 20" x 30". Here's where I went wrong and had to dismantle the whole thing: I made the inside of the frame 20" x 30". The problem is that then there was no overlap. Now, this didn't twig until I went to attach the poster, so then I had to cut my lovely joints apart and make my angled cuts all over again.

To assemble the frame, just apply some wood glue to the edges and a finish nail at each corner. My wood was quite tough, so I had to pre-drill my holes with a 1/16 bit. I used some Gorilla glue to attach a magnet to each corner. I put a piece of newspaper between my magnet and my clamp while the glue dried, just to make sure that I didn't accidentally glue the clamp to the frame - that stuff will hold anything.

While the glue dried, I put scraps in each corner to make sure that it stayed square in case it got bumped. I'm clumsy. 

I liked the unfinished look of the wood with the photo, but the frame would also look great stained or painted. My scraps were two colors, so I did one color for the sides and the other for the top and bottom. For hanging, I had one of those picture hanging sets languishing in a drawer. You know the ones that never have enough of the right pieces to hang things, so you end up with a random assortment of eye hooks and no nails. I screwed two of the eye hooks into the top of the frame and  strung some wire from the kit through them. You could also attach the wire along the back to keep it out of sight, but I wanted a more industrial look for this frame.

Pallet Headboard

This headboard for my storage bed was made from a pallet and some stud scraps that I scavenged from a trash pile on a construction site. The wood was perfectly fine, but had a number of nails that had been badly driven. It took more time to prise them out than it did to build the thing. Deconstructing the pallets took hours. Some of those nails are really stubborn. For the worst ones, I just cut them off flush with the support beams using my Dremel tool.

I didn't use a pattern for the headboard, but probably should have. I let the lengths of available wood dictate the dimensions. I knew how wide my bed was, and estimated how high it would need to be when I got a mattress. The height of my studs worked out pretty well for the uprights. The horizontal parts of the frame are the supports from my pallet. I just laid the whole thing out on the ground and made my cuts. The bottom of the headboard is hidden behind the bed, so I didn't bother tidying up the lengths of the pallet boards- I just used them as they were.

When I laid it all out, it seemed like a good idea, but the assembly fell apart when I stood it up. F@ck.

So, I had to reconfigure the construction of the whole thing. I eventually settled on making a frame using pocket holes, then attaching the pallet boards to the back using wood glue and finish nails. My pocket holes were constructed using one of the little $20 Kreg mini pocket jigs. The top shelf was attached to the frame with wood glue and some decking screws. I filled all the holes with wood filler before sanding and painting.

Like the mattress before it, there was some swearing as I hauled it up the stairs by myself. My kuckles were a little bloodied, but the walls remained intact. As for attaching it to the bed, I considered putting it on brackets attached to the back of the bed to make it higher. In the end, I decided not to mess with it, and just wedged the sucker in behind the bed and rammed the bed against the wall. It's sturdy and doesn't budge, no matter what happens. Win!

Since I scored the lamps (that miraculously match my throw and shams) at Goodwill for $8 apiece, I'm all good in the lighting department. However, the shelf on the headboard would make a nice place to mount some reading lamps.

Probably the prettiest pallet I've ever seen.

Awaiting paint.

One coat of paint to go.

Tree stump table decor with Modge Podge

I used leftover paint from the blue and white table, along with some sale fabric to decorate my stump table.

Materials: paint, paintbrush, fabric, string, pencil, tape measure, scissors, Modge Podge, sponge brush

Watching paint dry

First, I painted a broad paint border around the top and edges of the table. I used my Ace Paint and Primer in one, but it took two coats because the wood was so porous. MDF or ply would probably only take one coat. I waited for it to dry, but thankfully that took about 20 minutes on a warm day. If your fabric is thin, I'd recommend painting the whole top in case the paint shows through the fabric. You don't want to see the paint border.

 I measured the diameter of the table, and decided how much of the paint border I wanted to show. I then subtracted twice that to get the diameter of the fabric circle I would need to cut.

Using the ever-handy pencil-on-a-string technique, I drew a circle on the backside of the fabric and cut it out. My fabric is a pretty robust one that was in the section at JoAnns where the patio fabrics are. If you're using something thinner, you may want to Modge Podge the fabric before cutting to prevent the edgesr from fraying.

I slathered a copious amount of Modge Podge on the table with the sponge brush and then added the fabric. To center it, I used the same technique as for pie crust. Fold the fabric into quarters and then center the point of the circle. Unfold, and voila!

I like how the shadow from the screen makes the table look like a peace sign. Groovy.

High tech measurement technique, y'all.

Now, to smooth out the bubbles in the Modge Podge, you can buy a special tool. Or you can pull an empty wine bottle out of the recycling bin and use it like a rolling pin. Your choice. Me, I think that a nice cabernet adds a bit of class to the whole operation. 

Reduce, Reuse, get hiccups.

The Modge Podge goes on white but dries clear.

After it was smooth, I added two coats of the Modge Podge over the top of the fabric. It works as a sort of lacquer to hold it down and to prevent fraying.

Tree stump outdoor table

This sweet little tree stump table was the result of a complete whim.

Down the road from my house, there's a path where we like to ride our bikes. There's a dead-end street and some woods along it, and it has become a dumping ground for the local landscapers. I had noticed some cool palm tree stump segments of varying heights and thought that they would look really neat grouped into 3. I wanted to use them for room decor or an outdoor side table.

Cue me sliding down an embankment in flip flops and shorts to liberate some tree stumps into the back of my SUV. I keep forgetting about the BUGS in Florida, though. Every stump that I lifted up had become home to zillions of ants, beetles and other creepy crawlies that made my skin twitch just looking at them. I did manage to find one that had landed on its end on top of a dry spot. It was somehow bug free. Trying to get back up said embankment in flip flops while lugging a stump would have been rather entertaining for anyone who happened by. I layered the trunk space with some plastic bags that I keep in the car and threw the stump in.

My original idea of just using the stumps as they were didn't seem as good now that there was only one. I had to rethink my plan.

I had some scrap OSB, so I fashioned a very high-tech compass (a pencil, nail, and piece of knitting yarn) to draw a circle on it. I then used the stump as my workbench and cut the circle out with my jigsaw. I thought it would be a very straightforward job of screwing down the tabletop, but it turns out that palm wood is very porous and the screws just pulled right out again. So, I resorted to good old Gorilla Glue, and that worked brilliantly. I'm guessing that any other wood would probably be fine with screws, but the glue was so easy. It's held up for two months now in hot, humid weather.

Here's the table before decorating (pardon the night shot):

I'll cover the table top how-to in a separate post.