I didn't want it to be too overwhelming in terms of color or size because I worried it would make the very small space feel even more cramped. I tossed around a bunch of ideas, from just painting that wall an accent color, to hanging 3 or 4 large nature photos, to stenciling on the wall, to having some hanging plants or something. Originally, this was where the Loteria pictures were intended to go, but when I got them in there, the colors just seemed to be too much for the small space.
Eventually, I found these simple bird-shaped things made out of bent wood from West Elm. I wish I could attach the photo from the website here, but it looks like they must have taken it down. Here's what they looked like laid out on my floor after I took them out of the box.
Anyway, what I liked about them was that since it was a set of three birds that were all slightly differently shaped and were different sizes, I could space them out over the wall in any way that felt right, without worrying about being concerned about spacing and symmetry.
My first obstacle was to figure out HOW to hang them. The only things attached to the birds were these little gold hoops.
I took a trip to the hardware store to see if they had any brilliant ideas of what to do with them, because I was kind of stumped. Surely they didn't intend to just use regular ugly nails to hang these on? Unfortunately, the hardware store guy I talked was zero percent helpful. I mean, I guess he tried, but he was suggesting I use these ugly, bulky brackets, or fishing wire or something. I finally just decided to try my best with what I could find. I ended up locating these tiny little finishing nails that I thought might be just unobtrusive enough to do the trick.
When it came time to hang the birds, I used my favorite technique, which works best when I'm hanging things by myself. I made little cutouts of the birds, taped them up and started moving them around on the wall until I found an arrangement I liked. I eventually settled on this angled arrangement.
I basically eyeballed their placement, although I did do a little bit of measuring to make sure they were roughly centered on the wall and that the space between the birds was more or less consistent. When I drew the cutouts, I marked dots where the nails should go, so that once they were taped to the wall, I literally just put nails in where the holes were. Here's the first one:
This first one showed me that the finishing nails were going to work pretty well. They're very small, and as long as I drove the nail in just far enough for the gold loop to hang on, they were perfectly sturdy and unobtrusive. Here's what it looked like from the side.
So I kept going and once I got them all up the wall, here was the finished product.
Yay! I really like all the wood tones in this room, and so far, I'm enjoying the birds. The only potential downside is that from certain angles, the wall still looks kind of bare, so I'm going to see if that changes over time or if continues to nag at me. I think it's a very fine line in here, where if you add too much in, I think it might just feel claustrophobic.
One thing I do quite like is the new view I have when I walk by the bathroom in the hallway. I get to see this!
Cute! So with this, I'm thinking the bathroom is done for the foreseeable future. Feels good to check it off the list! Let's revisit the before and after one last time.
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