Ninety-nine Problems and A Clock Ain't One of Them...

One of the projects JEGs and I worked on over the winter months was some functional decor in the kitchen.

We had two issues that were driving us crazy.  First, the wall over the kitchen island was bare.

Ok, so that was driving me crazy.  JEGs wasn't exactly loosing sleep over it.

The bigger issue is the fact we have no clocks in our living room. I know you are probably all "..what about your VCR/DVD player/cable box?"  and I'm all first off, who has a VCR anymore?  Secondly, we have none of those in our living room.

Jigga whaaa?

When we moved into the house, in order to afford our mortgage save money, we cancelled our cable.  Most of the stuff we watch is on major network channels that we get for free through an antennae  and other stuff we catch up on Hulu and whatnot.  So we hooked an old computer tower up to the TV for internet watching and we have an XBOX for DVD viewing.  Neither of which have a clock on the front.

We have a clock on the microwave and the stove, but you can't see either of those from our couch, and since we are lazy, we needed a solution.

So we decided to kill two birds with one stone and put an over sized clock on that wall. [Read: clearly the only answer was to put another clock in the kitchen].

We looked around online and we couldn't find anything we liked to fill the space-- and the ones that did were SO EXPENSIVE.  So you guys know how I roll:  I do it my damn self.

We picked up house numbers from Lowe's.  Nothing too fancy, just 4" aluminum numbers for $1.48 each.   We did get bigger number for 3, 9, 6 and 12 to stand out.

We started out by making a large circle on paper to get an idea of how big we wanted to the clock to be.  Then we divided into pie-like slices to assess where the bigger numbers would go.

From there we drew lines across the slices to make sure numbers like the 10 & 2, 8 & 4 and 7 &5 would line up with each other.

We placed the numbers on the paper.  Once we were happy with the arrangement, JEGs made little marks through the nail holes of each number to show where they were.

He then taped the paper on the wall, and pushed through the paper at each pencil mark, making a small hole in the wall.

 Once he had pushed through all the holes, he lined the numbers up with the holes on the wall and screwed in the numbers.

Eventually we realized the cardboard slivers we were using as clock hands were not going to tell time, so we ordered a set from Etsy seller Clock Parts.  You can get clock hands in all sorts of fancy styles, but we went with the very utilitarian and clean look with simple 17.5" hands.

...and they were too big.  Oops.

JEGs grabbed his Dremmel drill and after some measuring, he filed them down to a better length.

I sprayed the larger numbers black to match the rest and we were finished!

                        

 

Here is the view from our couch;  you can clearly see what time it is:

The clock can actually be seen from the porch, and we've had delivery men comment how much they like the clock!

I'm thinking about pulling down the smaller numbers and painting them a charcoal grey, but that's not super high on my To Do list.

Here is the price break down for you:
Clock Hands: 18.95 + 3.95 (s&h)= 22.90
4" house numbers: 14.80 (10 @ 1.48 each)
6" house numbers: 9.45 (5 @ 1.89 each)

Total Cost: $47.15

Considering the cheapest pre-made clock we found to fill the space was $130 (and I was kind meh about it) I am super super happy with how this turned out and the cost.  Obviously you could get fancier numbers and nicer clock hands, but like I said, we were very utilitarian about this project.

How about you guys?  Any indoor projects you completed over the winter?  Or how about some fun spring time outdoor projects??

Always & Forever,
  ME