Picture Frame

As you probably know, Lindsey graduated this past April from college. As a graduation present I got her a print of the Mt. Timpanogos Temple that she had always liked (this is also where we were married). The print looked amazing but the place I got it from wanted about $150 in addition to have it framed. I checked around Rexburg and was quoted even more, about $200!!, to get it framed how I wanted. The print is 12"x36" panoramic which isn't exactly standard, so buying something pre-made wasn't an option either. I rummaged around the internet looking for ideas to get it done on a college budget and finally decided that the only way I could was to make it myself. I have a decent amount of construction experience and doing finish work so I figured it couldn't be that difficult. Anyway, I finally had time to work on it the past couple of weeks since I've been between an internship and school. Here's what I did!


I figured that it would be more work than I wanted to make my own stock so I went to Home Depot to see if they had anything that might work. I found some basic crown molding that had the general profile I was looking for and glued a piece of 1"x4" to the back of it, leaving about 1/4" overhang so that a piece of glass could sit in it. The piece above is pretty close to what I used. Once the pieces where bonded together I got my Father in Law's help to cut them to size on his table saw. Here is a pretty good youtube link for how to cut a perfect frame. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AWVjW-Da3A&feature=related



The next step was to glue the corners and clamp them together. This was pretty tricky because of the frame size. I tried everything from pipe clamps to staples to get it to stick together without any luck. There are special "frame clamps" that are designed for this but they are expensive which would defeat the purpose of me making the thing myself. Anyway, I found a niffty trick on youtube to clamp it together that worked great! Basically I laid it out on a sheet of plywood and used wedges to clamp it down. Here is the link if it doesn't make sense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2trWWHH9dg



Here it is clamped down.



Here I'm hammering in some corrugated nails to strengthen the corners. This was a pain in the rear because the piece I hammered them into was a hard wood. I cut up my fingers a bit with the stupid things but they made the joints a lot stronger.



After it was clamped together I used some easysand filler to fill in the imperfections and to smooth things out in general.



Here is a finished corner. The picture is a little blurry but you get the idea. Next I primed and painted it with some black spray paint. I tried a flat paint at first but the finish looked like charcoal. Next I tried a glossy spray which looked almost as bad because it was so shiny. I sanded the glossy finish down to ruff it up so that I could try a different paint on it but liked how it looked and decided to go with a "distressed" finish. The finish still wasn't what I wanted but I thought to use some wax on it to give it the right sheen. I learned this from working with stained wood. I ended up just using some black shoe polish that I rubbed in and then buffed. The finish turned out much better than I expected.


Once the frame was painted, I bought a piece of glass for it and used some glazing points to secure everything down.



Not to shabby!!