Spray Painting Frames & Quick Wall Cover Up

Back in Vienna I used cheap Ikea frames and an Italian wall calendar to decorate a large blank wall in our apartment (you can check out the post here).  I always loved the look and planned on reusing the arrangement in our dining room here in KY.  The trouble is that the pale, raw wooden frames are too matchy with our floors and neutral walls, so I decided to paint the frames to give the whole look more of an edge.

Here's what they looked like before.  Cute, but a little blah.

I laid out a plastic drop cloth and used spray primer first, paying special attention to the inside lip of the frames, which are easy to miss but noticeable when the project is finished. Then I sprayed one good coat of matte black paint, followed by a second coat wherever the coverage was thin.

Here is our dining room before, with the walls looking sparse and lacking some color.

I measured to find the center of the sideboard (which was roughly centered on the chandelier) and marked out a grid where the nails should go for the twelve frames based on some very tricky addition and subtraction.  Then I used the level to ensure that my lines were right and the pictures would hang straight.  With so many frames to hang, the extra work up front is worth doing; otherwise you could spend all day adjusting!

This is such a fun, easy project, and if you change your mind later, you can always switch the colors up and do it again.

xo

Liza