As I mentioned in my last post, the long shipping container wall in the living room/dining room/entry was calling out for some art. So Cynthia and I looked through our photos and found eight pictures of flowers that we had taken around the property. I uploaded the photos to AllPosters.com and received the prints a couple weeks later.

Now what to use for frames? Easy would be to buy some frames off the shelf at Machetazo or other local store. But as you know, this whole house project isn’t about easy. So, NO!

But what? With our concrete counter tops, benches, and shelves, well, why not concrete picture frames? That sounded exciting so I got right to work.

Last time, I posted the following photo of the form work for our concrete picture frames. I still needed to apply some strips of wood to make a recess in the back of the frame to receive the glass and pictures:

After I had the forms assembled, Armando mixed a rich (more cement than normal) batch of mortar and placed it in the forms.

Two days later, I pulled the forms. The new concrete frames looked quite good, but they had air holes and honeycomb here and there. They looked even better once we applied a coat of dark-gray grout to all the surfaces that would be seen. When the grout was dry, I sanded the frames smooth.

Next, Cynthia and I, each with a sponge, walked around the table a dozen times applying 24 coats of sealer as we made our rounds around the table:

Cynthia is putting the first coat of sealer on the first frame. Notice how the sealer darkens the grout that is spread on the surface of the frames.

The next photo shows the frames all sealed, although they still need to be fine sanded and one more coat of sealer applied. These things are heavy — fifty-pounds each! My next step of the process was to drill holes in the tops of the frames, tap in some plastic expanding anchors, and screw in heavy-duty hooks.

Now with the frames ready for hanging, I moved inside the house. Armando and I screwed a 20-foot length of sliding door track high on the wall.

We chose to hang these frame-beasts with chain hanging from wheels that I inserted into the sliding door track. Here is a photo of the wheels:

Note to self: Get a manicure.

Cynthia and I cut the chain and set the glass and photos in the frames.

With everything assembled, finally, we hung the frames on the chains and we were done.

Here are some shots of the photos mounted in the frames and the frames hanging on the wall:

The largest photo is 16″x20″ plus the two-times the width (almost 4-inches) of the frame, making it about 24″x28″. They are BIG but the wall can handle it.

Here is a panorama of the entire wall:

Ignore the curvature of the panoramic photo.

Now, isn’t that better than a huge blank wall?

We couldn’t be more pleased, and the whole project — enlargements, glass, wood for the forms, screws, sand/cement/sealer, door track, wheels ($14 each and we needed 14 of them), chain, and miscellaneous bits and pieces, and Armando’s labor sits at around the $500 mark plus about six person-days of work. It couldn’t have been easier!

Plus, we have one photo/frame left to hang in the half-bath off of the living room.

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.