5 Buck Craigslist Print

Lindsay’s apartment is looking SO cute these days, but she still wants a few more prints or paintings on her walls, so I have been keeping an eye out for her whenever I happen to be browsing through second hand places.  We already have several gold mirrors (my favorite!) and the large series of bright NYC prints in her apartment, so I was hoping to find something a bit different in keeping with the eclectic feel of her decorating style.

Last week I did a quick online browse through our local Craigslist offerings and came across this print.  It's definitely nothing fancy, and I knew I would ditch the mauve colored matting immediately, but the gold frame is in good shape, and I love the colors and the scene in the painting.  And for $5 I figured it was worth a drive out there to check it out.

So it turns out that the guy selling this had a whole stack of them, since they used to hang in a motel somewhere.  That's right, I bought motel art.  And I'm not too proud to admit it:)  Actually I ended up buying two of these things, since I figured for that price I could always find a place for one in our house, too.

The first step in my motel-art makeover was to remove the reddish mats from each print to see what I was dealing with.  That color was just not going to work in my house or in Lindsay's apartment, so I couldn't wait to get rid of it.  I carefully pried back the staples holding the backing in place and gently started to remove the first mat.

Unfortunately, the mauve mats were glued onto the smaller white mats underneath that I had been hoping to salvage and reuse.  When I pulled off the red mats, the white ones were basically shredded, so exposing them was a no-go.  

I took one of my ragged prints to Michael's, which offers while-you-wait mat cutting, as long as they have the mat you want in stock.  I picked out a basic off-white version, had two of them cut for me and reassembled them at home.  

Before we left to go out of town, I managed to find a minute to hang my new print in our hall bathroom upstairs (priorities!).  Whenever I'm hanging anything in drywall that needs a hanger more substantial than those little nail-hook things, I always use my favorite self drilling drywall anchors.  After trying just about every version of anchor out there, I'm a total convert to this kind.  Unlike the anchors that come for free with shelves, towel racks or pictures, these self drilling guys won't smash, get stuck, or pull through the drywall.  And they're so easy to use-- just make a small hole where you want to insert the anchor, either with a drill or a nail, and then screw the anchor into the wall.  

I'm happy with my new print, which is looking refreshed with its new ivory frame-- and hopefully less motel-like:)

xo

Liza