First off, I just want to extend our best wishes for the speedy recovery of our surrounding communities as they were hit by a horrific F4 tornado over the weekend. Fortunately, no one we know was injured – it is still unclear at this point whether others in those communities suffered losses but our hearts and prayers go out to everyone impacted by this tragedy. Many of our friends have lost their homes and I can only imagine what they must be feeling at this point. Keep your heads up and we are all here to help wherever we can.
I had some downtime so figured it was good time to crank out a quick post. Project Auuuunnnnooold has entered another phase and that is taking a huge amount of my days/nights, so I need to get these out when I can. If you recall, Linda’s favorite photographer is Peter Lik. Clearly an unfortunate name to carry through the early school years. If you are an avid reader of this blog you might also remember a trip to Vegas a couple of years ago netted us our great room centerpiece (link here). Earlier this year we made our annual trek out to the desert. Our new tradition is to visit the Peter Lik Galleries to see what is new in the collection. We should probably reconsider that new tradition since we now have a new piece for our guest room.
These are cell phone pictures so don’t take this as an indicative shot. The captivating component of Peter’s work is how it reacts to light. Again, you really need to experience it in person, but imagine the shot above as the “low” light state. It essentially darkens and the vibrance in the sky kicks in as if the storm is in full force – this is the reason I thought of this post topic based on the recent events in Washington). When the lights are on it, the pictures brightens and the lone tree becomes the focus of attention. The storm then looks like it is just building in the distance. Quite amazing really and dramatic change is what captivated Linda enough to want to add it to her collection (she may claim it was I who wanted it, but that’s probably just crazy talk). They added an Elements pack of our choosing so we technically came back with FIVE Liks. Of course, the minute we signed on the dotted line the thoughts switched to the work to hang it. The last one took everything I had, but the guest room would not require any stress with the cultured stone that the great room had. There was one MAJOR concern that kept swirling around the head – it had to be hung in a manner that provided confidence it would not fall. This condition is not so much a concern for the replacement cost, but rather due to where it was going – essentially directly over our sleeper couch which means directly over the heads of our guests. This was not something to take risks on.
The picture needed to be centered on the wall or I would soon end up in a psych ward somewhere – Linda often points out my small amount of OCD when it comes to symmetry. Non centered or worse yet crooked pictures will slowly grate on me until I can’t take it anymore and have to do something about it or vacate the room – and no, this is not just in my house so my apologies ahead of time if I happen to tweak a picture when no one is looking hehehe. Having help build our home, we have the luxury of knowing exactly what the interior of the walls look like. This provides direct access to where the studs are and any interferences that might be in the area. The first concern was the plumbing for the master bath on the other side of the wall, but that turned out to be lower than the hanging point. The stud locations were the problem. Unless there was some way of knowing ahead of time what you are going to put on the walls, just assume you will NEVER have a stud where you need it. I knew this going in so spent the flight home trying to think of a way to address this problem and still allow for the picture to be perfectly centered. The graphic scene of this picture hitting someone sleeping under it kept popping into my head. The standard answer is to use drywall anchors but history has shown those can pop out if they do not get a good hold or if too much weight is applied. This picture is heavy so wanted to leverage studs … if I wanted any sleep when we had guests. After significant noodling this solution evolved.
Hit the jump to read details on the hanging process
