Ocal Ham Beque

It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about how to hang plates on the wall. Since I get this question often (and I keep hanging more plates!) I thought I would share an update!

I’ve tried various methods over the many decades I’ve been hanging plates on our walls, but the best way I’ve found to hang most plates and bowls are with these hangers.

They are easy to apply and haven’t failed me yet! It’s important that you apply them according to directions and let the glue dry over night to make sure it’s secure.

Some of the reasons I like these hangers (besides how well they hold) are because they are mostly invisible and don’t damage the plates or the walls. I used to use wire plate hangers but they would make the plate stick out from the wall, the metal would often scratch the wall, the wire clamps showed around the perimeter and it would be easy to break a plate trying to make them fit.

The way I apply these plate hangers, you can’t see them at all from the front.

To make sure the plate or bowl lays flat on the wall, I apply the hanger on the disc like this below:

I’ve always thought plates on a wall were so charming. I think of plates as affordable art because you can often find them inexpensively at secondhand or thrift stores. You can mix them with framed art, too. Even if you just have one decorative plate or bowl it will add interest and contrast to rectangular frames.

Mix and match a variety of colors and patterns or even hang a whole set of plates and bowls to create a plate wall. It’s also a fun way to “use what you have” to decorate if you inherited a set of china you don’t need!

Have you tried hanging plates on the wall?

I’m making steady progress on my walk-in closet. I finally had to take a day off on Friday, though. I had been working for two weeks straight without a break on the closet, and my exhaustion hit a point on Friday that I decided I needed to take one day to rest before I injure myself. So on Saturday, I was able to get to the fun stuff — adding trim to the boring plywood boxes and shelves. I was so excited to finally get to this point because it’s the trim and molding that make the most difference.

After finishing the basic build on this closet, this is what the cabinets looked like…

And because it’s the side that requires the most trim, I decided to start to start trimming out the right side of the room first.

Here’s what that side of the room looks like now with all of the trim attached. I still have to install the molding — the baseboards along the bottom and the crown molding along the top.

To trim out this side, I started with the longest horizontal pieces. On the bottom, I used 1″x4″ pre-primed lumber.

And along the top, I used 1″x6″ pre-primed lumber.

I made a mistake right from the beginning because I mitered the outside corners of the top 1×6 boards. Those should have been cut straight. But I was working alone, and wrestling that 140-inch into place and nailing it into place, there was no way I was going to take it down to cut it straight. So I decided to ignore it at this point and take care of it in a later step.

With the two top and bottom horizontal pieces in place, I then attached the long vertical pieces. I nailed all of the trim in place using 16-gauge 2-inch nails through the face of the trim pieces and into the edges of the plywood. I used 1″x2″ pieces for the two outside vertical pieces, and then 1″x4″ pieces for the two on either side of the center section. But before attaching those, I used my table saw to rip them down to 3.25″ wide so that they just covered the edges of the plywood boxes as well as the ends of the shelf supports.

And finally, I used 1″x2″ lumber to cover the edges of the shelves.

Here’s a look at the progress from the other direction…

I did all of the wood filling as I went, and if you’ve been around for a while, you know that I use wood filler very liberally. I do this for two reasons. First, wood filler shrinks as it dries. So if you try to put it on perfectly smooth, it will shrink into the joints and screw holes/nail holes as it dried, requiring a second coat. I avoid having to do a second coat by kind of mounding it up on the joints and screw holes/nail holes. But also, I use my rotary sander to sand all of this smooth once it’s dry, so my sander makes very quick work of removing all of the excess and making those joints and nail holes/screw holes very smooth.

So I ended my weekend by making sure that all of those joints, nail holes, and screw holes had been filled with wood filler.

I only use wood filler to cover nail holes, screw holes, and joints where two pieces meet on the same plane. In other words, if it can be sanded smooth with a rotary sander, I use wood filler. If two pieces meet at an angle, for example, where the shelves meet the cabinet boxes, those areas get filled with caulk. I didn’t get to that step yet, and these cabinets will require lots of caulking before I can prime and paint.

So you’ll notice that I only used wood filler on the face of the trim where they meet on the same plane. But I did not use wood filler where the two trim pieces meet on top of the shelf and form a 90-degree corner. Those areas will be caulked.

But I did use wood filler where the trim and the plywood shelf meet on top of the shelves because that can be easily sanded with my rotary sander and leave a perfectly smooth transition between the two pieces.

I’ll wait until the other side is trimmed out and the wood filler has had time to dry on that side before I start sanding so that I can do it all at once. So this is where I left things last night. I also didn’t do any wood filling on the washer cabinet because I still need to remove that top trim piece and rip it down just a bit for my washer to fit inside the cabinet.

To remedy my mistake on the top trim pieces where I had mitered the corners instead of cutting them straight, I used my Dremel Multi-Max to cut off the excess from those boards that stuck out past the edge of the cabinet. The cut was pretty rough at first, so then I used my rotary sander with 80-grit sanding discs to sand it smooth. And then I piled on the wood filler to fill in between the pieces. When I attach the crown molding, that will wrap around the sides of the cabinets by the door and by the appliances and will continue around the room.

I repeated that process on the other end where I had mistakenly cut the piece at a 45-degree angle.

Repairing that mistake this way was a whole lot easier than removing the entire long piece that had been nailed in place with 16-gauge 2-inch nails, removing all of those nails, dragging that 140-inch piece back through the house and into the carport to cut off that mitered corner, and then wrestling with that long piece to get it nailed back into place.

So that’s the weekend progress! It’s really starting to take shape now.

The bottom molding (i.e., the baseboards) will wrap around the base of the tall cabinets as well as the base of the washer cabinet to tie those sections together and finish off everything along the floor.

I’ll also be adding baseboards inside the washer and dryer cabinet to finish off the bottom of the walls.

And you’ll notice that I didn’t add trim to this piece in the center section. This is going to be my glass-top earring and ring drawer, so this plywood will be removed. I’m still trying to determine exactly how I want this storage designed.

There are two ways that I can do it. The first and most obvious way is to build a regular drawer that pulls out so that I can access my earrings and rings. The second option would be to build a storage compartment that doesn’t pull out like a drawer, but instead, the earrings and rings are accessed by putting the glass top on hinges that raises up to access those items. I kind of like both ideas, so I haven’t settled on one just yet.

Of course, the benefit of making it a drawer is that I can set things on top of the glass countertop, and with it being a drawer that pulls out, those items on top won’t be disturbed. If I make the glass top on hinges that raises up for accessing the earrings and rings, I won’t be able to set anything on top of that glass area. It will have to remain free and clear of any items that will block access. But I still like the idea. So I’m going to hold off on doing anything with that middle section until I have the details worked out. I’m almost 100% sure that I’ll end up with another shelf in that section once I decide exactly how I want to store my necklaces there.

Anyway, it was kind of a slower weekend with me taking off on Friday, but at least there was some progress! And I’m finally to the fun stuff!

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.

We have a project in process right now, we’re working on a little refresh of the entry! Unfortunately we had to repaint our entry because the painters used the wrong paint formula on the trim in the renovation. It’s a long story but we are repainting all of the trim ourselves and just trying to get this done so we can get onto the fun parts.

Our plan for the rest of the entry was to either wallpaper the (tiny amount) of walls or hand paint them, wallpaper the ceiling and find a fresh door color. We added the lantern a couple of years ago, removed the carpet and added wood floors and plan to add a runner at some point. (See befores and afters in this post!).

I’ve intended to choose a color for the interior of our front door ever since we did the renovation, but I just wasn’t sure what color I wanted. At some point awhile back we tried a darker blue which we immediately vetoed. That was months ago, so we are so excited to finally make this entry as cute as it can be!

I tried one more door color called Duxbury Gray by Benjamin Moore, just on a whim last week, but the tone of green turned out to be just a little too dark and drab in that spot of our entry. Sometimes with color you experiment and it works out, but other times you just don’t know what you aren’t going to love until you try it. It was a gorgeous color in our home, and my husband loved it, but just not the right mood for us especially in that darker corner of the entry.

We did consider other colors for a minute, even corals and yellows (!) which would’ve also been fun, but I really just want the backdrops of our main floor to be pretty shades of creams/whites, blues and greens and then other colors are accents.

We have a blue green color on our living room walls that we love, it’s Beach Glass by Benjamin Moore. In our home it’s a little bit moody and yet so welcoming and beachy. It’s really perfect for that room and our style. I considered just using it again on the door but I really wanted it to feel at least slightly different when you can see them both at the same time, perhaps lighter or darker and a wee bit more green, so the hunt was back on.

After another long search online I was getting overwhelmed by the options but I saw one that seemed like the right mood– a cheerful greenish blue but also moody 🙂 called Del Mar Blue by Benjamin Moore. It looked fairly close to the color Beach Glass, but after comparing the photos and looking up the LRV (light reflective value) I determined it would be little darker and also it appeared to be more green.

Of course you can never trust online colors to be exactly how they appear. You have to test them in your own light, even Beach Glass looks moodier here in real life than I’ve seen it in some homes and in the online sample. Testing paint is really the only way to know for sure (especially if you’re not really familiar with colors or how to determine which one will be right).

Fingers crossed this one wouldn’t be too green or dark, we picked up a sample this weekend and got the first coat on. Much to our delight, we love it.

Now we just have to do the final coat of paint on the door, and finish painting the trim and then we can get onto the other fun touches.

We’re considering using a grasscloth wallpaper on the walls for more warmth and texture. My husband was willing to hand paint the walls with a pattern which he has done in several of our past homes, but we both love grasscloth so we might reserve his artistic talents for another space. We have so little walls to paper since most of the stair wall is paneled, so we think a textured wallpaper would be cozy.

I had bought a couple of rolls of a star wallpaper from a designer friend over a year ago that I want to use on the tiny entry ceiling as a fun surprise when you look up. I can’t decide if we should tackle that installation ourselves or hire help, ha. It’s been years since I wallpapered a room (and I never enjoyed it hahahah), and a ceiling seems tricky. But it’s such a small space, maybe it’s worth doing ourselves. We shall see. If I hire someone to do the grasscloth (which I probably would) it would make sense to hire out to do the whole space.

So, that’s what we’re working on! I’ll update you on progress. I’m always awaiting my new couch, so there’s lots happening!

What projects are you working on at your house?

I’ll start with the most exciting thing that happened yesterday. My plywood, trim pieces, and molding were delivered! I’ve never had anything like this delivered from Home Depot or Lowe’s before, so I had no idea what that process would even look like. Lowe’s brings everything on a huge flatbed truck (the size of an 18-wheeler) with a forklift attached to the back, and then the delivery person uses that forklift to place the items where you want them. It was such a quick and painless process.

And y’all, I was so thankful that we have a driveway now! That made it so easy for him to drive right up to the carport with the forklift and place them under the carport.

He had to place the plywood at the edge of the carport because the forklift couldn’t fit under the carport, but it was the perfect placement to leave lots of room for me to work under the carport. I had already checked the forecast, and thankfully, we don’t have rain in the forecast for the next week.

That’s a lot of plywood! 😀 Most of it (21 sheets) is 3/4-inch plywood, and the rest is 1/2-inch and 1/4-inch plywood.

Of course, the plywood that I needed to start with was on the bottom, so I had to move all of the other pieces off to the side before I could even get started.

And all of the 3/4-inch ply needed to be ripped down to the depth of the cabinet boxes because all of the 3/4-inch will be used for cabinet boxes, shelves, and separators (i.e., between drawer sections and to form the dedicated slot for my step ladder). I was having trouble deciding on 16-inch-deep cabinets or 20-inch-deep cabinets, so I decided to split the difference and cut the plywood to 17.25 inches so that when the face trim is attached, the cabinet boxes will be 18 inches deep. I got about halfway through ripping down the 3/4-inch plywood for the cabinet boxes.

Since I don’t have a big table saw with an outfeed table, I had to work on the ground…again. 😀 I placed a 1-inch foam insulation board on the concrete under the carport and cut everything with my circular saw.

I used my Kreg Rip-Cut Circular Saw Guide (affiliate link), which worked perfectly for this project. It’s a great low-cost option for those of us who don’t have table saws with outfeed tables. And it works with almost any circular saw.

I worked as late as I could last night (I don’t like using power tools outside past 8:00pm), and I got about half of the 3/4-inch sheets cut down and stacked. The stack on the right is the one for the closet cabinet boxes. The stack on the left is the waste, but I can assure you that it won’t actually go to waste. I still have an entire workshop that needs to be outfitted to make it usable as a workshop, and that plywood will be great for making shelves, storage cabinets, and other things.

In other news, I realized yesterday that I made a HUGE oversight. I still don’t have a scuttle hole to access the crawl space of our house. The scuttle hole used to be in the closet area of our home gym, but when the new subfloor was installed, I told them not to cut a new scuttle hole in that location because I didn’t want a scuttle hole in our bedroom floor. I also plan to move the attic access out of that room as well.

My plan was to put the new scuttle hole to the crawl space in this corner of the foyer, but of course, it should have been cut before I finished the floor. But now, I have a newly finished floor that I have to cut a hole in. Yikes!

I plan to put an upholstered ottoman in that area, so at least if I mess it up, it won’t show. But I’ve been stressing out about having to do this. In fact, I had trouble sleeping last night because I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was going to cut into this flooring and subfloor.

I finally decided (at about 3:30am) that the best option would be to buy a plunge saw. I’ve been looking at plunge saws for a while now, but the price for the brand that is considered the best has held me back. The Festool brand costs anywhere from $700 to over $1000, depending on the model. And since I haven’t really had a need for one to this point, paying that much money for a tool that I haven’t actually needed wasn’t really a priority for me.

But now that I need one, I still don’t want to pay that much for it! (There’s not a local place that rents plunge saws.) My priority now is to get the closet, bedroom, and foyer finished, and I don’t want to spend that much on a tool right now. So I’ve been looking at other options. There’s a brand called WEN that sells a plunge saw with a track for $169 (affiliate link), and it actually has really good ratings. And then Kreg has one for $299 (affiliate link), but it looks like the track is sold separately. So if any of you have experience with either of those brands of plunge saws, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

In happier news, I got the three-step ladder that I ordered for the closet (affiliate link). Y’all, I’m so impressed with this ladder! I wasn’t sure what to expect from an aluminum ladder that has a wood grain finish. Of course, the images on the product listing were impressive, but you just never know if those images have been edited to look great.

But it’s actually a very pretty, durable finish. It looks great, and it’s very sturdy!

When it’s folded and stored in its dedicated slot in the closet, this is all that will be seen. I may use a bit of Rub ‘N Buff on those bright chrome screws so that they don’t command so much attention. 😀

And finally, the electrician just left, so I have a working dryer outlet now! Woohoo!! That means that I can build that other cabinet for the dryer this weekend, and I can actually have a working washer AND dryer by the end of the weekend! I haven’t had a working dryer since the middle of December, and I’m so excited to get that in place and wash AND dry a load of sheets and blankets! I never thought I’d be so excited to do a load of laundry. 😀

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.

In my recent post 5 fresh and pretty spring kitchen ideas, I shared this basket I’m using for spring plants in my kitchen!

I had a few requests for planters like it at different price points so I rounded a few options up below (they weren’t as easy to find as I hoped they would be but maybe more will show up in the next few weeks. I can share more if I find them).

Planters like these are so fun to hold a collection of various spring flowers or plants, but also would be lovely in all seasons!

Some of the ones I’m sharing aren’t “real” planters but you could definitely use any basket to set potted plants in. I do that often, you just remove the plant for watering (in fact that’s what I am doing with the basket on my counter). A couple of the planters are stoneware (I have one of them!), which are also adorable!

If a basket you want to use is more shallow than the plant, I still think it might work if the plants were in attractive pots. You could also use moss to tuck them all in.

The secret to how full my planter looks like is to use plants with thick leaves so you can’t even see the pots. I have four small plants in mine and I set them on saucers just in case they drip a little.

Scroll down to see the options! Enjoy!

Sources for above (top to bottom left to right):

My rattan planter basket // Basket with handles (Ikea) // Basket tray (3 finish options) // Rattan Planter Basket with drain holes (lined) // White hobnail ceramic planter // Hyacinth basket // Rattan basket with 3 sections // Stoneware hobnail planter with 3 sections // Cement wide weave long planter // Long wicker basket with handles

FLODBJÖRK from Ikea below is only $19.99 – It’s durable thanks to the plastic rattan – and handwoven by skilled artisans, so each box is unique!

This one above says it will be available May 18, 2025. Be on the lookout and I’ll try to share on my social media and newsletter if I see it in stock!

If you love my specific planter basket, this round one (above) is from the same brand and style—but smaller and a little bit less in price.

My mom got me this hobnail planter for my birthday and it fits perfectly in this little window by our front door. I just love it! Makes me happy every time I walk through the entry or down the stairs.

Related Posts:

Decorating with Fishing Baskets