For the thirtieth time I heard “there’s got to be something for that wall, Ad,” from Kelsie. We had been slumped on the carpet by my bedroom door for a solid hour now, tossing half-assed, Pinterest-painted ideas back and forth about how to fill some freshly cleared wall space. Kelsie rolled her eyes.
“I’m confused. It’s not like filling up wall space has been an issue for you in the past,” she said as she gestured to the rest of my room with the enthusiasm of an annoyed secretary. I guess she was right.
The rest of my room’s wall space brims with creative solutions to emptiness, including a gallery wall and a fancy arrangement of hats just to name a few. Above my bed, a display of saggy but colorful old clothes is pinned to the wall’s vertical grey surface. A clothing rack and two bookcases — one with my personal collection of books and magazines lining the shelves and the other acting as a display for all my pants — fill the wall’s empty spaces. If amateur interior design was an art form, that wall was my masterpiece.
“It will come to you, dude. It has to,” Kelsie reminded me.
By this point the tones of pity and hesitation lurking in her voice had shoved their way to the forefront and it was clear that Kelsie either doubted the task could ever be completed or she had simply stopped caring. She thumped to the floor, now fully reclined, as silence began to permeate the air between us.
A few moments of this stuffy lull passed until I blurted “Gah! I just — there’s something we must be missing.” Kelsie sprang back up, startled by the sudden burst of energy. “I know this wall sucks, but it’s still just a wall. This is nowhere near impossible. C’mon, Kels, think!”
“Okay. Hang, like, some tree stumps on it, something like that,” she responded frighteningly quickly. The command hadn’t even hit the back wall before she shot her solution back. “Like you did with the dresser, white-wash some slices of wood and stick it up there.”
“… Uhmm, what?” I think I was still in shock from her abrupt response, because it took a couple moments to wrap my mind around the glorious idea. Kelsie proceeded to explain and re-explain her point, dumbing it down with each iteration. It was on her third time around, when she was demonstrating a paint stroke in the air with her hands and slowly mouthing the word “brush,” that it hit me.
“WAIT,” I said, teeming with the giddiness of a grade-schooler after answering a story problem in front of the whole class. “I think I get it! That’s GENIUS!”
And it was.
Kelsie proceeded to explain to me how by gathering slices of wood in varying shapes and sizes and dying a few of them different colors I could make this wall art especially dynamic and alluring. She lent me a bag of acrylic paints to mix with water and create the dye and accompanied me to the nearest craft store to get the wood.
Tackling a DIY project can get needlessly stressful when a perfected Pinterest prototype taunts you, but it is important to gain some basic building and decorating skills before jumping on a project like this. Knowing how to drill, hammer, sand, etc. will save you countless hours of stress, while understanding different techniques in painting, shaping, coloring and designing will ensure your projects don’t come out looking too amateur. Thankfully, the Internet is home to a near infinite amount of basic how-tos and walkthroughs.
Execution of this project was actually pretty simple. Because the inspiration sprang more from an impulse, we didn’t have a set list of rules to stress about following. The project was expressive and experimental, which added an extra layer of enjoyment to the creative process.
The next time you find yourself stumped on a design project all you really need to do is gather a bunch of old art supplies, throw them at a wall and see what sticks. You’d be surprised at the cool decorations you could muster up.
@additakofficial