Thanks to a great suggestion from a client, every day will be a day at the beach in my office.
During a meeting with Patti Adams, owner of Interiors by Patti Adams/Traditions Home Furnishings, I was telling her of my plans to decorate my basement. We’d already insulated the walls, thanks to the team at USA Insulation in Omaha. But now we needed to paint and change the decor.
The challenge was to find something that would provide a great working atmosphere for me, since my office is located in my basement, and yet be teen-friendly enough for my son and his friends to hang out and play games. Patti suggested doing a photo mural. Being a photographer, I thought that was a great idea!
I found Murals Your Way through a Google search. Located in Hopkins, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis, they offer a wide variety of photos to choose from. Or for a slightly higher cost, you can use your own photo for the mural. They have an online tool that lets you upload your photo, enter the size of the wall or area to be covered, and see a preview of what it will look like.
The photo I chose was an ocean view I shot from our ship while docked in Nassau, Bahamas on a three-day cruise this winter. But I wanted to crop the photo really tight so the strip of land would appear over the TV and stand, and I didn’t know if the resolution was high enough to make it work.
Thanks to the great help from Karen Hodge, we figured it all out. She first asked me to send the original photo and the cropped version so her graphics staff could look at both. She then sent me a strike-off, or sample piece, and from that I was able to see that yes, the photo would work.
Within a week, the mural arrived at my doorstep. The photo was printed on 48-inch-wide vinyl wallpaper, which we had to paste ourselves. I had hung wallpaper and borders before, so it was pretty easy to do this. The mural is printed with a 2-inch overlap, so matching the seam was a bit of a challenge. It took us about 3 hours from start to finish.
When I ordered the mural, I took a photo of the area, cut out the wall and inserted the photo so the Murals Your Way staff could see exactly how I wanted the mural to look like. After we finished, I compared this photo to the one of the finished wall. They were spot on with the cropping of the photo and printing of the mural.
Thanks to Karen and the team at Murals Your Way for working so closely with me to make this come out just like I wanted it. Photos of my basement makeover can be found on my SmugMug Gallery.