Hangin' Tough

Oh, NKOTB, those were the days.  Are you singing along in your head?  Personally, I'm having flashbacks of the roller rink.  Anyhow...last year, Seth and I discovered cardboardsafari.com and became the proud owners of Fred (the large moose trophy) and Robbie Jr. (the medium rhino trophy).  Fred used to hang in our living room and Robbie Jr was in our guest bath.

I've been contemplating where they will make their home in the new house.  I'm still not 100% sure where Robbie Jr will end up, but I fell in love with the pic below and I knew that I wanted Fred to hang above our fireplace.  

houzz.com

Large frames like this are expensive.  So, I decided to make my own.  I mean, how hard can that be really?  I bought a 10 foot long piece of molding that had already been primed at Lowe's for $10.  I cut it into 30" pieces with 45 degree angles so that the pieces would fit together into a square frame.  

What I didn't do was cut perfect 45 degree angles.  :(  When I started assembling it with some corner brackets, the cut edges were not sitting perfectly flush.  I tried sanding, reassembling, sanding some more, reassembling again, cursing, wood filler, more cursing, etc but it just wasn't going to work out for me.  I guess I just can't saw properly.

So after hours of grueling work trying to make my money-saving idea come to fruition, I drove to Hobby Lobby and got a 2'x3' frame at 50% off.  I spent less than $20. Hmmmm....I probably should have just done that in the beginning.  Making frames apparently takes some talent that I just don't possess.  Oh, well.  Lesson learned.  Maybe it will be salvageable for another project.

I spray painted my new frame a nice silvery gold color.  It came with cardboard which I wrapped with some orange fabric.  I used double sided tape to secure the fabric to the back of the cardboard.  

A masonry bit and some tapcon concrete anchors allowed us to make sure that Fred wouldn't fall to an untimely death (this is where the blog title comes into play in case you were wondering).  We used the 1-1/4" length to hang the frame and a longer 2-1/4" length anchor going through the fabric and cardboard and into the mortar to hold Fred.  (I didn't want to hang Fred directly to the fabric as I feared that his weight would noticeably pull it and that he wouldn't be super secure that way.)

We used some frog tape to help us visualize our future mantel so that we could be sure we hung Fred and his frame at the proper height.  And here is Fred in all his glory watching over the living room.  I feel so much safer now.  ;)

 Just in case that didn't satisfy you, here are more views of Fred from different angles.

I think everyone needs a cardboard moose trophy.  Or at least some sort of fake animal trophy.  Check out West Elm and Z Gallerie for some non-cardboard options.  

Is anyone else in love with fake animal trophies?  Or maybe they just creep you out?  (I'm not sure how our guests felt about being watched by Robbie Jr while they were using the lavatory.  Maybe I'll ask them one day.)