11th
my wall art finally arrived: part 3 (of 3)
After 24 hours over glass and under books, I removed the weights to check on the flatness of the pieces and was pleasantly surprised with the results. The sections were more-or-less flat with only minor wrinkles — which will probably never be 100% removed unless I had it done professionally, so I decided to move on to removing the “hard” folds. I used a similar approach to removing the soft ones, steam and iron, and to my delight they unfolded quite easily. These open sections were placed back under glass for a few more hours.
Due to my impatience, I decided not to leave them under weights overnight, and instead moved to the hanging process. I debated for a long while in Ace Hardware as to how to affix the sections to the wall. I ended up with these nifty 3M pieces of REMOVABLE double stick tape specifically made for poster. Being a bit skeptical I tested a few before hanging the posters to ensure that they would not damage the 40-year-old paper — which they did not.
I decided that the optimal positioning for the poster would be centered left/right and as high on the wall as I could get it since I knew I really didn’t have that much extra room to play with. My wall is 272” x 162” while the poster is 252” x 118” which meant the poster would start 44” off of the ground and extend to the ceiling with 10” to spare on each side. I began hanging the poster starting with the Top Left and working my way down & across:
Work for Thursday night stopped at the half way mark and resumed today. It became increasingly difficult to hang each successive section because of the tolerance stacking (each little tilt to one section adds up when you place more sections) of previously “improperly” hung sheets. I ended up taking a few sheets down to adjust their position so there were the fewest number of gaps across the poster. With perseverance, another trip to Ace for more stickies, and 5 hours elapsed I finally completed the hanging process:
It was difficult to get a good shot of the poster due to the positioning of my track lights and sheer enormity. I will try again tomorrow with a wider angle camera when there’s natural light to help out. For now, I’ll sit back relax and enjoy ~15 hours of hard work. Too bad I don’t have any 7UP in the house or this would certainly deserve a toast.
