Going Somewhere?

On quarantine day 11,579, a rare and valuable shipment of Starbucks coffee and genuine half and half arrived at the Krueger household after a shortage of some months. On this most glorious day, I may have overindulged a little. After my third cup, sweating and unable to contain my unfocused excitement, I embarked on a home project: an accent wall!

I have never painted the walls of any home I’ve lived in as an adult. I’ve never attempted an accent wall of any kind. “WHAT COULD GO WRONG?” coffee screamed in my ear, filling me with blind confidence and maniacal delighted giggles that alarmed my children.

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First let me explain some things: our house is enormous. It is easily much much bigger than any home we’ve ever lived in, and two and a half times the size of our beloved Hawaiian bungalow. This place is massive and echo-y, has zero closets, lots of floor to ceiling windows, and every wall is white. White walls look nice with our stuff. However, almost every wall in the house, we discovered after we moved in, is concrete. How do you hang stuff on concrete? So for weeks and weeks after moving in, we didn’t hang anything at all, and the echoing continued. Also—we moved in the Friday before Christmas; there were not a lot of options available at that time, home-wise, so we unanimously picked this one based on its excellent location even though it’s too big.

Now, even though we have a bunch of stuff hung up with command strips (thank you, quarantine daze) we still have quite a bit of blank space. This is where my three-cups-of-coffee day comes in!

I LOVE MAPS. I like maps of many kinds—new atlases, vintage road maps, aviation maps, hanging schoolroom maps, tourist maps, maps on postcards, nautical charts. If you’ve received a wrapped present from me in the past 14 years, there’s a good chance it came in an aviation map or a nautical chart. Their thick paper is especially beautiful with a smooth, sateen finish. The pilot in my life needs up-to-date maps for obvious reasons, so I’m recycling.

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Anyway, the kids helped me gather up all the aviation and nautical maps we could find around the house. We measured the blank living room wall. We flipped them over and checked the colors and markings on both sides, then moved them around for balance. Then the kids played Nintendo while i continued giggling to myself and sweating and teetering on top of a step ladder. Armed with nothing but scissors and duct tape, I worked my way across from top left straight across. I had an idea to do more of a patchwork, but it would have been an inefficient use of maps and required a lot of cutting, and I wasn’t quiiiiiiiite sure I had enough with the same glossiness. I wanted it to reflect light consistently. After I was finished of course I found another stack of maps. The lower right is where we will probably put a couch sooner or later, and thus the most forgiving section.

I’m very pleased with how it turned out. Now it’s a focal point for the room instead of the forgotten end of a huge space where forgotten stuff collects. Most of the maps are places we’ve lived (or places Chris flew over on cross-country training flights). So it’s meaningful to me in that way, plus most of the panels have coastline—Hawaiians say the ocean is what ties us all together. It’s far from perfect—some of the maps have tears on the fold lines from years of use, and the pages are wrinkled and used-looking. I love it.

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More about the maps: after lockdown, come over and see if you can find: Pensacola? Houston? Jacksonville? Washington, D.C.? Tokyo? College Station? New Orleans? How about some charming surprises: somewhere up there is a place called Pickle Patch?! Now I can’t find it. You can also look for Boll Weevil, a NASA Ballon Launching Site, Danger Areas and Bombing Areas. The purple circles are restricted airspace around airports.

Have you done any quarantine home projects?? Please tell me!

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