board game art

Today I am posting about one of my favorite rooms in the house…the game room. And that isn’t JUST because it holds the poker table. It is where board games became art. And it had the bonus of helping one of the “issues” in my marriage. *Rewind 20 years* My husband is an avid board game collector.   In the very early {and dirt poor} years of our relationship, we entertained ourselves with antique mall shopping in search of games.   Any game was good, but an old Monopoly set was the holy grail. And then eBay was invented. Oh my. Let’s just say that all worthy games that landed on eBay between 1995 and 1998 are evenly split between my house and a guy in Florida whose collection rivals my husband’s.   About a year into the Monopoly set bidding war, a gentleman’s truce was made to stop the inflated pricing creating peace and harmony between the growing collections.   Our collection growth was in direct proportion to eBay’s growth. Again, Oh my. When we built our home 6 years ago, I wanted to make sure that the game room displayed the prized board game collection. After a bunch of math, I decided on a panel size that would allow 8 color blocks to display the Monopoly colors – purple, light blue, pink, orange, red, yellow, green, and Boardwalk blue. If you start there on the left and move clockwise around the room, you will visit each color block in order. The color is painted on the wall inside a simple picture frame molding trim painted black. I was a little surprised that at that time it was a bit tricky to match the bright colors.   I guess these colors aren’t as popular as I would have thought! The next step was to find how to hang the boards.   I looked into a ton of options including framing, glass covering and mounting.   Most seemed WAY too expensive when you consider whatever option was chosen would have to be repeated 24 times. The cheapest and most effective solution found was to cover the boards with a cut piece of plexiglass. Each piece of plexiglass was cut a bit larger than the board creating a clear mat and three boards were hung vertically on each colored panel. Yep, a bit more math. Each square clear “frame” was drilled with three holes. Each of the three holes was filled with screws with plastic button covers. The bottom two screws support the weight of the board and keep it from slipping out of the arrangement. My husband chose some of his favorite boards. *cough* When I told my husband the plan for the room, he was very excited and replied that he would get started on finding some special boards to buy for displaying. Obviously the 100s of boards in the attic would NEVER do.

Today Holly cleaned the gunk off the microwave control panel with Pledge ^® Multi-Surface II Antibacterial Cleaner.