Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Key and umbrella hanger

Supplies:
key hooks (ours from Lowes)
wood base (ours from Michaels)
decorative accents (ours from Michaels)
paint and paint brushes
screws long enough to go through the board and into the wall
nail long enough to go through the board and into the wall

Prep the base. We didn't do this right, but this is how it should be done. Tape the key hanger to the base in the place you want it. Place on the wall where you want to hang it, and drill into the holes that will attach the hooks to the base and the base to the wall, making sure the hooks stay in place. Now trace the hooks so you know where to paint. (If you get the plain hooks on the thin piece of wood, tracing isn't exactly necessary unless you want specifics.) We had to redrill the left bird when we went to hang it up because we didn't make sure it was secure when we drilled.
Decorate it. Paint it as you want it to look. We did lovebirds because we're such lovebirds (dork moment), and added our names to the bottom. I thought about adding a sealant, but we can always do that later. We purposely went out of the bird border because I wanted it to get that sloppy, artsy look where you paint and then outline and it looks nice enough. I'm not sure it came out that way, but we like it anyway. :]
Plan the decorative accents. You don't want to hang the accents right away because you want to make sure it's as flush with the wall as possible. Plan it out so you know where it goes once it's hung. We had two attachable doves and the pretty vine.
Hang it. Put it over the holes and screw in the screws. Easy enough, right? We also added a nail, but we added that later so I'm making the step for it later as well.
Decorate again. We attached the vine with a hot glue gun in equalish spots so that it would be secure. We hid the starting point in the bark and under a ridge so it would look kind of natural. We already had the doves in place, but Mark moved them to where he wanted them well after it was done.
Secure it. Now, you could have nailed it when you screwed it in. We didn't because we decided to as I was preparing to put the vine on it. I told Mark to wait so we could hide the nail under where the vine went natually. So we picked that little piece that hangs down in the middle, moved it a bit out of the way, nailed into the wall, then moved it back into place. Now you can't even tell it's there and it's secure!

No comments:

Post a Comment