m-a-s-o-n

I gave my sister an incomplete baby shower gift over 2 years ago and finally finished it this weekend! She was going to get custom metal letters for Mason’s room. I got some air duct metal from a metal shop in town and cut out the letters using a waterjet cutter at University of Michigan’s architecture school’s fabrication lab (Brandon was a student at the time). If it’s any consolation, I actually had that done before Mason was born. The, ahem, hang up for completing the project was figuring out just how to hang up these letters.

I went through so many strategies from drilling holes to welding screws on the back. But by the time I could actually drill holes in the letters, Brandon had since graduated so there was no way to remake a letter if I messed one up! Ahh the pressure! I couldn’t handle it. Drilling holes was out the question.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, after 25,372 more thoughts and ideas about mounting these letters, and I get a picture text from my mom saying, “hey, wouldn’t these be great for hanging up Mason’s letters?” and she had snapped a picture of these:

well duh! How easy is that?! Just stick them on! No holes, no worries about hitting studs, no mess to clean up should they move. So, this past weekend, the letters were installed.

a tip: We mounted the “s” first to ensure that the letters would be centered in the space.

another tip: The Command strips say to not mount to anything below 50 degrees, so I first warmed up the metal with a hair dryer because they had been sitting in the car all weekend and we put them on an interior wall because those exterior walls can get pretty cold in the winter!

and a note: the tops and bottoms of the letters aren’t parallel, that’s the font, not my wobbly hand.

Now, at 2 years old, Mason finally got his “baby shower” gift.

I think he likes it.