A Wall Map Goes Magnetic

Micha's had this giant wall map ever since I moved in with him and, while I always like the colors of the map, I was never really satisfied with how it was hung on the wall with push pins that had to be restuck every month or two because the map would slip a few centimeters and the corners would rip just a little bit as gravity took its toll. Plus, I thought it would look a heck of a lot nicer with a frame.

Fast forward five and half years later and I finally did something about the map. To jog your memory, here's how the map used to look, back when it was on the other side of the wall.

Nice colors, no? But the push pins and saggy corners? Not so much. (The first picture in this post really demonstrates the sad sagging I'm talking about.)

So I devised a plan to first mount the map on some kind of large piece of wood/foam board/something so that it would hang flat and we could do away with the push pins once and for all. Which is where we ran into the first snag in my plan. Picking out and buying the giant piece of MDF was no problem. But when we brought the thing out of the Baumarkt and over to the car, we quickly realized that there was no way of getting the 163 cm x 109 cm (oh yeah, I came with very precise measurements) board into the trunk of the Mini (while a tiny-ish car, it's trunk is not actually that small).

After a bit of back and forth about what to do - I could walk with it home! It's only 1.5 km... Maybe we could get it on the tram?... Who could we call...? - we finally agreed that maybe, just maybe it could fit in a bigger car. So Micha trekked his way to the nearest DriveNow car while I waited around with the board, and then, lo and behold, it just barely fit!

Seriously, a few centimeters wider and I'd have been walking it home. Somehow... (Glad we didn't have to find out how!)

When we finally got it home, it was time to get down to business using the other item I'd gotten at the Baumarkt: magnetic paint.

I won't lie to you. I had high hopes for this magnetic paint and it kind of let me down. Not in that it didn't work (it did!). But rather, it was really the most difficult paint I have ever used. And on top of that, while I knew from reading other bloggers' experiences with magnetic paint that I'd need at least 3-4 layers of it to get a magnetic effect, I completely underestimated how much paint I'd need to paint that many layers (I ended up doing five) on this giant board.

I naively got the small can thinking, it's not like it's a whole wall! Oh, self from 2 months ago, how silly you were.

Two hours and two layers of paint later, I promptly returned to the Baumarkt  to buy another, full-sized can of paint. At this point, my dreams for a cheap DIY magnetic map were dashed and I came to terms with the fact (amid Micha's laughter) that this would just be a cool magnetic map that cost me 55€ in supplies. Live and learn, right?

And then Christmas happened and the magnetic board sat around like a sad old museum piece for a month and a half.

Finally, a couple weeks ago, I decided it was high time to mount the map to the board, so I busted out the spray adhesive I'd gotten just for the occasion and, once again full of high hopes, went through a thorough process of spraying the board, then unrolling a small portion of the map, sticking it on, then spraying again, unrolling, sticking, and on and on. I applied plenty of pressure, then left it for a while to dry and came back a bit later only to find out...

... the darn thing hadn't stuck at all! You could just peel it right off! Hopes dashed again! The weird texture from the magnetic paint - it's bumpy from all the small magnetic pieces in in, but we paint over it with another color because we like the gray so much (laziness may also have played a role...) - meant the spray adhesive was a no-go.

I was ready to throw in the towel but luckily, Micha was not so easily dissuaded. He busted out the super glue - yup, super glue - and suggested I go over all the edges with super glue because it's super glue! It works on everything! And sweet valley high if he wasn't right! (It also stuck to all of my fingers and caused me to rip out entirely too much of my hair with said sticky fingers but what can you do?)

So after 1.5 tubes of super glue, much cursing, and then a few cautious tests to see if it really truly stuck, and some cheers and high fives once we realized it did, the only thing left was to nail it to the wall (we'd pondered other hanging methods, but this seemed the easiest and most secure).

And tada! The "frame" I'd been longing for around the map!

But wait there's more... magnets!

Oh, do I have big plans for this map now... :)

Quick tips if you want to make one yourself:

1) Painting over the magnet paint would certainly make a smoother surface and then the spray adhesive would probably even work.

2) Get a sturdy, but not too thick piece of MDF (or whichever material) for the backing. We went with 5 cm, which made for easy hanging.

3) Buy the super strong magnets - I got these guys that work like a charm, because regular magnets didn't really hold, even with 5 coats of paint.

4) Don't compare the final price to that of a new map. It's the charm of the old one (and in our case, Micha's love for his map) that counts.

Random Tiny Home Improvements

I often do weird domestic things on a day off and yesterday was no different (holidays on a Wednesday are weird, by the way. You get essentially two Mondays and two Fridays to your work week when really, it'd be better to just give us the whole week off to celebrate German Reunification, am I right?). Micha was only around for half the day (poor guy had to leave for Munich to go to Oktoberfest with his company. My tiny violin is playing a wee tune for him...) so I got up to what I usually get up to when I have the place to myself: opened a bottle of wine, turned on Hulu, and starting reorganizing random things around the apartment that didn't really need it but also kind of did.

First off: new binder labels. A couple years ago, I got giddy about the fact that you could put all sorts of cool pictures on the sides of those ugly two-pronged binders that all Germans have no less than two shelves worth of - seriously, I have no idea how they have so many papers to organize into so many separate categories - and went a little bit crazy ordering said sticker labels from Amazon and applying them to all of our folders (yes, half of which are mine now and they mostly hold about three pieces of paper in each but hey, I try to blend in where I can). Fast forward a couple years and I finally realized, with some not-so-subtle commentary from Micha who, and I quote, "hated those stupid stickers," that they were starting to make our office side of the guest room look a wee bit crazypants.

It was just starting to be a lot of color and pattern for such a small space. The ugly mismatching bookshelves don't help but that's a battle for another day.

So after strongly considering using some of my chalkboard contact paper - my favorite obsession - I rationally decided that white would be a better color there and opted for some whiteboard contact paper. I do love erasable labels. Somehow the thought of putting permanents words on the sides of those ugly binders just doesn't sit well with me. Et voilà.

If I had at all decent handwriting, these would look a lot cooler

Before and after - not perfect, but an improvement, most certainly

Next, to continue my whiteboard kick, I realized/remembered - four years after having built our kitchen from scratch - that our backsplash was actually from the office section of Ikea and in reality, should be used for whiteboard purposes. Enter my new recipe/measurement-conversion/random-greeting board:

I used to keep my cups-to-grams measurement conversion papers (a necessity when baking abroad) on two tiny little note papers hung on the oven lid/backsplash thingy with a magnet, even after an accident involving the oven steam vent somewhat mangled them. The temperature and butter conversions alone have sufficed for me for a surprisingly long time, but I'll be happy to add more soon to my new list.

The only remaining conversion units left from my sad little lists, soon to be added to.

And finally (something that involves no whiteboard markers!), two trips to Ikea and two broken frames later (that we still have yet to replace), I got one of the three new posters I ordered from fab.de framed and hung on the wall, with a bit of elbow grease and only a tiny amount of blood (of course).

Micha refers to it as our National Socialist propaganda print. Not exactly what I was going for...

Those two aren't going to stay together forever. One of the other prints fits better with my awesome These are Things LA map but hey, this was the first one I framed and if I left it laying around too long, I think we all know by now that the frame wouldn't have lasted more than a couple days before mysteriously toppling over and breaking to pieces all by itself. 

The No Longer Sad Wall!

We actually did it! The exclamation point is well deserved, as I tend not to follow through with projects nearly as quickly as I intend or claim to, so I am quite proud of us for actually getting this frame wall done when I said we would. It helped to have all the frames lying on the floor for a week, bugging the crap out of Micha and making him all the more willing to help me get them hung up instead (but he really did like the idea, so that obviously helped, too).

Funnily enough, his first comment was, "it looks very American" and a laugh. A happy laugh.

Yeah, that statement confused me, too. But he claims Americans always have "lots of little pictures hanging up, while Germans always have just one big piece on a wall." I suppose it is kinda true... Though maybe we just read too many decorating magazines and blogs and get crazy ideas in our heads of filling our walls to the gills. :) Either way, I'm glad he embraces my American-ness.

There may very well be some crooked pictures in there, I tend not to be able to tell if they're all straight or not...but I figure when friends come over, they'll straighten them, as they always seem to do (apparently we have enough crooked pictures for it to be often noticed).

Not all of the pictures will stay, some were last minute replacements when I realized the layout I had on the floor was a good foot wider than the actual wall space (oopsie poodles!) and had to quickly rearrange and rotate some frames, so I hope to replace a few of them with some cute new prints in the near future to mix things up a bit. I'd like to think of it as a constant work in progress that we can update whenever we find something new to hang up. But some of those beauties - like my favorite picture of Nat, Liz, and me pinching Alyssa's tush at her wedding, or the adorable baby pictures I found of each of us - are there for good!

The airplane print is a Thomas Prior photo and the Elvis print is by Landon Nordeman, both from 20x200 | The bullfighting drawing is a Picasso print picked up on Nat's and my travels through Europe | All other pictures are ours

My Weekend in Pictures

We started the weekend off with a Friday night movie and friends, I cannot recommend the movie highly enough. We saw The Way with Martin Sheen and it was so touching, and sweet, and funny, and sad...and just all around enjoyable and very much worth the watch (bonus: I love the fact that Emilio Esteves not only played the son in the movie, but also directed his dad in it, too!). It also made us want to pack up our giant backpacks and hit the road... but I suppose that will have to wait a while (le sigh).

On Saturday we headed to another awesome pool party for Matthias' birthday, which I'm sharing pictures of later because there are just to many good ones to include here! Ok, fine, here's a sneak peek:

Aron looking mighty dubious of the water | You can never have enough beer cooler floaties

And I'm proud to say that on Sunday, we really did tackle my biggest to-do of the weekend and hung up the frames on the sad wall! And I think it looks freaking fantastic. (I think Micha does, too, but he's a man of few words and so I take his conciliatory nods for great withheld exclamations of enthusiasm.) Well, one picture is still missing - a canvas print I ordered that I'm picking up today - so that will have to wait too, but look, here's proof!

That's his "really? You're taking a picture now?" face. Also, yes, the lanterns from the baby shower are still totally there. Hanna will get them for her room, eventually.

And since I was feeling so productive, I went ahead and got a couple more home projects done, too. Cuz these moments are few and far between.

We replaced our previous hallway picture with this fabulous one I gave to Micha for his birthday (I got it from 20x200, which I also can't recommend highly enough - that place rocks! Two of the pictures on our new frame wall are from there, too.). In case you can't tell, he's a bit of an airplane fan. :)

I also got around to improving the front door cork-/chalkboard calendar I'd previously DIY'd. The chalk lines I'd had on there had made it rather tedious to update and as a result, the calendar still said November. So I wised up and used some colorful washi tape to make the lines instead and, bam! new, much more usable calendar! Now I just need to hang a big sign above it that says "Don't forget: KEYS! PHONE! UMBRELLA!" and our door will have all the daily reminders we need on it before leaving the house.

And since I love adding chalkboard touches to things, I whipped out my new chalkboard paper (contact paper? Whatever it may be called...) and relabeled a bunch of our spices. Just because.

Apparently, we hoard dried Italian herbs

Some random plants that weren't so happy on the balcony got a new home in our kitchen hanging planters, which have been used for many things over the years, but now for the first time for plants. On the left is the mint that I oh-so proudly grew from a cutting!

I swear the kitchen isn't really that intensely green... The lighting in there is crazypants.

So obviously I now have six new cuttings (including four from Anja's garden, since she had some different varieties) growing...

But most of the day was spent enjoying the rare and very welcome sunshine on the balcony, reveling in our wee little forest, and grilling tasty large steaks for dinner on our new portable grill (again, just because).

The babies are growing up nicely!

Thanks for the fun napkins, Emily!

Why do the weekends ever have to end...?

Sprucing Up the Sad Wall

On Sunday evenings, my probably very least favorite time of the week (Micha and I are notorious Sunday haters due to its all-too-near proximity to the ever-dreaded Monday), I tend to get these random and sudden desires to get something important done. And we're not talking something small, like packing my gym bag for the next day. Last week, it was my overdue taxes for both the US and Germany (I still can't believe how easy it was to do them, by the way; had I known, I would have actually done them on time!). This week, it was our sad, empty half wall in the office/guest room that urgently called out for my immediate attention.

I'm a little embarassed to show you just how sad this wall (which is opposite the balcony in our very oddly shaped guest room) has been looking for, oh, the past year perhaps, but there it is. That canvas print (of a picture Micha took of a tea leaf in Malaysia) is hanging there because we haven't found a better place for it yet and that shelf is still hanging around because neither of us has bothered to remove it (even though I voice my disdain for it quite loudly on a monthly basis). Well, this Sunday, I'd finally had enough and decided it was time to put our collection of random frames to use and spruce up that wall with pictures and fun prints.

So I measured out the suitable dimensions for hanging frames on the wall - making sure they'd be higher than the couch but stay under the blue paint line and not extend above to the white strip above, which would look awkward - and then laid out all the frames I could find on the floor. At this point, Micha casually looked over from his usual place on the living room floor (his computer-time space), sighed loudly, and said something to the effect of "why must you always start these projects on Sunday evenings...?" Which is a fair enough point as I haven't really progressed past this stage since then.

No, that's not quite true. On Sunday it looked much less unfinished. The past few days, I've made multiple trips to dm to print out a bunch of our pictures and have been slowly putting them in the appropriate frames. (It's funny how nice it is to have prints of pictures again. I'm so used to seeing them only on the computer these days but nothing beats holding a picture in your hand.) 

My goal is to finish the project - hanging included, which is where Micha comes into play as I seem to live in a crooked world and can't hang pictures straight for the life of me, whereas Germans have a freakish talent for hanging things perfectly level on the first try - this weekend and have a lovely new frame wall to show off next week. I've ordered another canvas print which will go where that random blank canvas is lying as a placeholder, to include and am currently pondering which cute prints from Etsy to finally move from my wishlist to my cart to round out the wall. Here are the current top-seeded options:

Clockwise from top left: I like big books by Luckythirteen Design | I want to ride my bicycle by Milli-Jane Studio | Start being awesome by Luckythirteen Design | Venn diagram by hippos and nuts

Thoughts? Especially from those of you who like to stay in this room from time to time? :) I can't wait to show you the finished product soon!

ps. That big books print totally makes me think of one of my favorite Friends' scene every time. Love it!

Office Makeover

I recently mentioned that we finally installed some much-needed storage space on the office side of our office/guest room, so I thought I'd post some before and after pictures. And lo and behold, while searching through old photos this weekend, I found lots and lots of before pictures of the room from back when we first moved in and started working on it!

Let's start back in 2008 when we first moved into this apartment, which was about two times as large as our previous place (*ahem* Micha's previous place in which I became his permanent roommate--along with sister for three weeks--after we unwisely secured no new apartment for ourselves once our rental contract was up. He has the patience of a saint.) The room was, as I've mentioned, painted an ugly shade of yellow that clashed with the other shade of yellow in the living room.

 We started out with a very sad minimal amount of furniture. And again, by we, I mean Micha, as I had merely a couple suitcases full of clothes and other crap at this point.

We finally got ourselves a sleeper sofa and some curtains for the room and could officially call it an office/guest room (with a balcony! - my tagline when convincing friends to visit).

You cannot even imagine the relief that swept over me when we finally painted over the awful '90s butter yellow walls.

Then, last time Natalie was here, she put her interior design skills to work and insisted we rearrange the room to make it seem bigger and more inviting. And sweet cracker sandwich was she right! The guest bed is cozier and the desk has a lovely view of the balcony (which is great, as Micha temporarily works from home this month). Needless to say, we embarked on this rearranging on a day when he was at work, as I find boys somewhat resistant to change. It took him a while, but Nat's clever setup totally won him over in the end.

And finally, now with shelves! We've been in dire need of storage space for my crafting stuff, photos, etc. (basically everything other than books, which overflow our bookshelves). I didn't quite buy enough boxes during our last Ikea trip so, oh darn, I'll just have to go back!

It  feels really great to get some pretty organization into this small space. Now we just need to rehang lots of pictures and our map on the other side and the room will be complete! For now, that is...