Philadelphia Eagles canvas prints sign for son's room - 1 week+ long nightmare project
The finished product turned out great, right? I wish I knew that I was getting myself into such a nightmare and documented it step by step. It would've made for a much more picture oriented posting.
I bought this canvas set off Ebay for around $20 and it was going to be shipped via "slow boat from China". It took nearly 6 weeks to arrive. If I bought it framed on wood already, it would have been $70. In hindsight, that extra $50 would have been well worth it.
Eventually I get the package and it is in a roll tube with just the 5 pieces of canvas.
- I go price shopping to get the wood frames from A.C. Moore or Michael's or one of those craft retail stores. The price is for getting 20 pieces of wood (5 canvas pictures with 4 sides each) - the price is over $100
- I find a place on the internet that sells all the pieces for around $40 and they are from the USA and will ship for free and quickly. At least one thing went right.
- I watch some YouTube videos stretching canvas across wood frames and see that I may need some canvas stretching tool that framing people use and end up buying one of those for $20
- I end up trying to use this tool and it is of no help, money wasted.
- I end up seeing some people commenting on these YouTube stretching canvas videos, simply saying that they just stretch the canvas by hand and staple them into place.
With my carpal tunnel in my hands and the incredible difficulty of trying to line these images up on the wood and get them stapled properly, it was an unbelievable task for am amateur.
I will never do this again. I strongly recommend that any amateurs who try to do this just buck up and pay for someone else to mount it. I couldn't do more than one frame per night. I was breaking a sweat and it was taking me hours to get it right and stretched without wrinkles.
In the end, it's done. My 14 year old son is happy it fits in with his new theme for his bedroom. You may like a lot of sacrifices for your kids. I never knew that buying this wall hanging would mean that for a week that I'd be playing with a staple gun and wood every night.
Looks pretty good in the end though. Being a divorced Dad and knowing that I helped him decorate this room in my ex-marital home that I paid for 100% makes me feel like I am still there with him. I have joint 50/50 custody, but I still like to have a piece that I worked with him on. He helped hold the canvas pieces at times, so it was a joint project. It was probably 90/10 in my favor but he thinks it was 50/50, so that is just fine by me. :)
That’s awesome!
Awesomely difficult, but yes it all worked out in the end. I should've just paid for the framing to be done for $50 and called it a day. I spent more than than in tools, materials, and certainly time.