Tennessee is My Home!

Yes, I know the J is backward.  It got knocked down while we were putting the TN map up.  Hubby doesn't care which way it is turned sooooo...it's backward.

I have been trying for the last year to make my new house, home.  I have definitely had fun decorating.  I have wanted to show off what I have done, but didn't want to do it on Facebook.  So I am going to do it here.  I have been slow-taking an entire year- to get things done, but I think I can finally start posting some of the pictures.  I'm going to start by showing off the latest addition. This project has been brewing in my head for an entire year!  I saw a giant TN cutout map made out of pallet wood at the Red Bicycle in Germantown in Nashville and got the idea.  I lucked out with finding a guy who sells barnwood for $1 per linear foot.    Well the first load I got was actually wood flooring rejects.  Great wood!  Perfect for projects!  But I still ordered another load.  I just wanted to be sure I had enough since I had a ton of projects besides the TN map.  The second load was REAL barn wood.  Straight up from an old TN tobacco barn!

The wood had such great color on both sides!  It was perfectly weathered gray on one side and smokey brown on the other.  We decided to use the brown side since my walls are gray.  So we laid it out on sawhorses and went to work.  I downloaded a vector map and resized it in Photoshop.  I was disappointed to find that if I did the map perfectly to scale, I would have an 8 foot long wall hanging that was only 2 feet tall.  So I went with a slightly more squat map than to scale.  I ended up with 80" x 27".  I saved it as a .pdf and tile printed it from Powerpoint.

We screwed boards into the back of our barnwood, cut out our map pattern and traced it onto the wood.

 Next was cutting out the pattern.  The Mississippi was a booger!  We ended up having to buy a new jigsaw cause we burned out the old cheap one.  Hubby was really getting into it so he splurged a bit.  He was planning our next projects as he shopped for it.

 Once it was cut out, Hubby ground down the little bit of screw that was sticking out.

 Then I started painting.

 I added just the center of our TN flag.

Hubby spent the next weekend umpiring baseball.  I couldn't stand waiting to get it in so I lugged the thing inside by myself.  It was HEAVY!

 We finally got it up later in the week.  I LOVE it!!!  

So let me know what you think:)