Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Oh, the places we go!

Before Cameron was born, Jon and I traveled quite a bit, most of the time by taking long road trips. I'm one of those peeps who enjoys the journey as much as the destination, and I don't mind a 24-hour car ride, taking in the beautiful scenery across the U.S.
I've always wanted a place where we could document places we've been, and to search for places we still want to go. When I first met Jon, he had a big laminated map hanging (crooked) in his office. It worked for the "bachelor pad-ified" (is that a word?) space he had back then, but a wife entered who likes to make things look pretty. I thought it would be a great idea to put little pins in the cities we've been to, so I went and bought a new (un-laminated) map, and decided to do just that. I also wanted to make it look like wall art (our office is actually a corner in our downstairs living room)- not just a map tacked to the wall, so I set out to find a nice frame to put it in. Turns out, 50 x 32 inch frames don't exist. And the cheapest quote to have one custom made was about $200 dollars. Enter a wife who likes to do things herself, and you have a custom-made framed map (with cork board behind the map!) for just $26. That's right. I spent just $26 on trim, backing, a cork roll, and picture hanging wire.



I won't lie- making a frame that's over 4 feet tall was not exactly easy, and was a little time-consuming. But I am so pleased with the results, and even happier I didn't fork out 200 bones to have someone else do it. The map also serves a functional purpose in Jon's office; when he gets calls from people who want to move out of state, he has a nice, visual reference to estimate mileage and see where he might be going. It's exactly what I was looking for!

9 comments:

leah @maritalbless said...

You are so impressive! Love it and what a steal at $26 to finish it off!

Samantha said...

Wicked awesome! I love it!

Laura said...

What a great idea! I have like 4 things of odd/large size that need to be framed and I can't bring myself to spend the hundreds it would cost. You just inspired me to get crackin!

Anonymous said...

That is so cool! Reminds me of the Verizon commercial :)

Kristen said...

so cool! Good job!

Unknown said...

Amazing!!!! I love that map so much, it looks old and time worn.

Roeshel said...

You did a great job! I've been wanting to do the same, it's on my DIY project list. I love how yours turned out!

Kimberly said...

Love it! both the frame and the idea to mark the places you have been!

Anonymous said...

I just stumbled across your blog and was flabbergasted when I saw this. I just bought the same map, but the World version from Office Depot. I orginally was going to back it with cork and look for a fram and then my boyfriend said oh I am sure we can find a frame for this, so we bought the map $9.95 and hadn't started looking for a frame yet....yikes....are you going to do a tutorial on this maybe???

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