The barn tree

Last spring, Matt took me to a friend’s home and I was able to tour a 150-year-old barn that was about to be torn down. I fell in love. This is the Mosaic Moments page I created following my adventure …

The part of the barn that amazed me the most were the ladders. These ladders went from the floor of the barn to the second and third stories. They were built onto the main support beams of the barn and I fell in love with them.

I even got Matt to pose on one for me …Many months later, I found a tree made out of a pallet on Pinterest and thought it would be perfect to replicate for my house. I figured I could put knobs and clips on it and hang favorite photos, cards and other items that could change throughout the year.

So, I asked Matt to go back to that farm and get me some discarded barn wood to build the tree.

He came home with a piece of one of those amazing ladders!!! He told me it was the one he posed on and I let him believe that I believed his little white lie. These days, that barn is a pile of rubble, so there was absolutely no way to know what ladder the piece he brought home came from. But, Matt can be a real romantic sometimes, so I went with it.

Anyhow, I asked him to use the piece of the ladder as the trunk of the tree and to use barn siding, trimmed down, as the branches. He did as I asked and created this amazing tree for me …

 

I added random knobs and pieces of hardware to the tree to hold my creations. Many of the knobs were purchased at Hobby Lobby. Others were from Home Depot. I also made a few with my paper crafting supplies … check back in a few days to see how I did it! Every knob is unique — there are no two the same — but all are in silver, white, black, cream or glass.

 

For some scale, here’s how it looks in my house. It hangs on the hallways wall that connects the bedrooms to the kitchen via the living room. (I live in a very small house) … The pictures don’t do it justice (it’s hard to photograph in a small space on white walls), but it looks amazing and makes a huge difference in my living room.

(remember to click on the photos for a closer view)

At the top, I placed a rusted pipe fitting I found in the rubble at the farm. Matt used toggle bolts to hang it to the wall and I asked him to use really large washers to add a bit of metal to the wood. I love that you can see where the rung of the ladder was ripped off of the ladder side. The paint and patina is all-natural, century-old barn paint, water damage and weathering. All we did was clean it.

I made the explore life knob and then glued two Tim Holtz clips to hold photos and cards. I used Art Glitter Designer Dries Clear Adhesive. It stuck almost instantly and held strong! And, they work perfectly as you can see!

 

When we were at Home Depot looking for toggle bolts to hang the tree, Matt and I both noticed the chains and he asked if I would like to add it to my tree. I jumped at the chance. The Home Depot employee thought I was rather strange when I asked for only 3 feet of chain. He had a very clouded look on his face as we attempted to explain what we were doing, but when I mentioned “cards,” the light bulb went on.

“You mean Christmas cards?” he asked with this excited look on his face because he finally figured out what we were doing … or so he thought. I just went with it. Sometimes it is impossible to describe my altered style to those who only use pipe fittings for pipes and chains to hang plants and secure loads. lol

Here’s the tree with a few random things hanging from it … These are cards I recently made, some ornaments that didn’t sell at a craft show last week and a favorite photo of mine.

On the bottom rung, Matt used picture hanging wire to create a thin clothesline for hanging things. I added a few mini clothespins by American Crafts that were left over from a project to hang my cards.

I also added a few eye hooks and this chain from Prima fit through perfectly.

I love my new tree and I hope it inspired you to turn some “trash” into something fabulous with the help of your paper crafting supplies!