DIY Canvas Frame
HAPPY MARCH! So, thankfully this was a much smoother week and we've had several projects to work on throughout the week to keep me busy. We are finally going to host our very first house warming party. We bought our first house in September and have really enjoyed decorating OUR house instead of somebody else's. We have been trying to prioritize any projects we want before the party and we show off our house.
My sister was always big into interior design, even majored in it at school for a little while. My room was always more of a mess and never had much style or taste. Growing up my parents' house was always well decorated and we always got a ton of compliments on Mom's decorating style. So I come from a family of women with great taste which are big shoes to fill with a house of my own finally.
Turns out I'm not half bad at it myself. Even when we first started dating and renting our friends always told us that our place felt like home. I have always liked comfort, practicality, and subtlety.
Anywho, that was my long winded way of saying we still have some decorating to do. We have this large blank wall that we wanted to cover up before the party. We went to my favorite home supply store and found this gorgeous 40"x40" oil painting. It fit perfectly in the space, but after staring at it for about a week we decided it was missing something. Brad came up with the idea of framing it so I turned to Pinterest and found us a pattern. Here is what we did:
Canvas Frame
Supplies:
-1x2
-Trim
-Nails
-Staple Gun with Staples
-Stain
-Sandpaper
Directions:
1. Measure the canvas you want to frame and miter your wood to fit. Cut your trim to match the size of your 1x2s.
2. Attach each corner with your staple gun first. If this feels sturdy enough to you, feel free to leave it at that, but we added a few nails to stabilize it completely.
3. Drill some pilot holes into your trim pieces and nail them to your frame. The pilot holes prevent the nails from splintering the wood.
4. Stain your frame. Remember my trick, put a thin coat in a small place and wipe it off. You can always add more stain if you desire, but you can't make it lighter. I actually stained mine first with the cherry stain, but it wasn't dark enough. So I did a second coat with the black cherry. The frame will not take much stain, so try and use whatever you have.
5. Let your stain dry completely and stick it around your frame. Ours turned out to be a very snug fit and didn't need anything to attach it to the canvas. We stuck our frame on and I told my husband it fit so perfectly it looked like it was built just for it. He just rolled his eyes and reminded me it was. You know what I mean though? It looked professional like it came with it. I was so proud of us.
6. Hang it up, if it's a little heavy you can attach a piano wire to it. Ours weighed next to nothing so we just hung it up by a nail.
Step back and enjoy your work! We only spend about $20 in wood, trim, and nails for the project. Already had everything else. Trying to buy a frame that size would have cost us a fortune, but we were able to easily make it for next to nothing. We're going to use the same concept to build shadow box frames for another wall. Be ready for that blog post hopefully soon.
What do you think? Not half bad if I do say so myself. I think we're getting pretty good with the miter saw.