More Painting. Why Not?

We had/have some not-so-secret shameful elements in The Serpico House.

You've seen our living room. It looks nice.


But then there's the upstairs hallway... Not as nice.




In case you're keeping score, this is a photo from when we first uncovered the floor in the upstairs hallway. You can see the small chunk of rug still left at the top of the steps. On the plus side, the carpet is long gone. On the minus, the walls in the hallway were still the same dingy white... until about a week ago.


Downright shameful that we waited this long to handle that business, but I'm glad we did. Ol' Painty Pants and I had a "painting date," and we got it done. It's the same color as the living room--"Basketry." Except for... umm...

Well, there's the whole area above the steps that is gonna be hard to do.

See, the whole area above the stairs is problematic. As the stairs head downward, the walls just keep going upward... and that's a tough area to reach. The experts recommend using scaffolding or extension ladders or something. Um. Yeah. We ain't got none of those. So... We'll have to figure that out.

Adding Art

What you see right here is the first thing we've actually hung on any of our walls with nails. Considering the number of nails and nail holes we've removed and filled in The Serpico House, you can imagine that we've been somewhat reluctant to make new ones.

Anyway, this is a painting that was done for us by a good friend. We like it.

We need to have it framed... or maybe learn to make a frame for it, but it's nice to see some art on our walls.

Xavier is a little luckier in the art department. He has some great Eric Carle wall decals. They look like these....


He personally oversaw the application of these decals, and he frequently comments on his friends "Brown Beyah" "Burdie" and "Goggie" during diaper changes.


So this naturally has me thinking about wall decals for grown folks. A lot of them are not our type of thing... phrases, etc. Fine with me if you dig that kind of thing, but I can't picture living with some kind of quasi-inspirational quote on the wall. Now, if they made quotes from Sun Tzu's The Art of War on decals, I'd kind of consider this idea, but so many of them are phrases like "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" or "I'm Everything I Am Because of You." Now, while these sentiments certainly apply, I'm pretty sure they can go without being seen on the wall every day. And the hearts and such? I can't take it. Too damn mushy.

Some of the graphic decals are nice, but... eh. I think we should should probably stick with framed art.

Art and Clusters

OK, so most of The Serpico House is looking pretty good these days. We've got the humidity thing in the basement under control. The rooms are, for the most part, painted the way we want them. The kitchen is... the kitchen, and I guess that's not going to change anytime soon, so we're just going to live with it for a while longer. We have the yard sort of figured out with our lawn-cutter guy, and we've actually gotten the gutters cleaned--by the way, it hasn't rained since we had the gutters cleaned about two weeks ago. Figures, right?

Eventually, we plan to have the big tree in our yard trimmed back so that it's not hanging over the house, and we do eventually want to handle the ivy on our back wall, but those things will also have to wait a while.

All of these things are great, but we haven't really dealt with art or hanging stuff on the walls. It's not like we don't have any art to hang, either. For example, one of our dear friends made us a lovely painting, and we really like it... but we haven't hung it yet. We also have a bunch of neat prints, posters and carved masks, too. Now, in my younger days, I probably would have just bashed a bunch of nails into the wall, popped the masks and paintings onto the nails and called it a day. As for my myriad posters, prints and other items... well, let's just say that I used to be a big fan of scotch tape and staples. I know, I know... tacky, right?

So, acting as an adult here, I'm thinking about frames and arranging artwork around the house. Dig on this photo for a minute or two.....


Granted, we don't have a white couch (and I'm pretty sure we'll never get one!), and we don't have any funky wallpaper, but that cluster of framed artwork on the wall speaks to me. In fact, Avy and I visited some friends recently, and I really wish I had a picture of one of their walls to show off here--they have a really wonderful amalgamation of neat, framed stuff on their walls, from music-related posters to personal photos and works from local artists. It's visually arresting and compelling. The lady of the house says she snagged most of the frames at thrift stores. I think the key here is that all of the art is framed. Most anything looks more important when it is framed. For example, this poster is just kind of a band poster for a show that has already passed...


But I bet if I had it in a nice black frame, it'd be a cool thing to have on the wall. A conversation piece, even.

I want to get on this as a project and hang up our art. Soon.