Idea for Unique Wall Hooks

I lost a closet this year. It didn’t go anywhere. It’s technically still there. It turned into a really cool Indian-Moroccan (with a dash of Turkish tulip textile thrown in) sitting nook in our guest room. And as a recent young teen guest used it, as a sleeping nook!

When you travel, do you take all your stuff out of the suitcase? I’ll hang up things that I don’t want wrinkled. But I try to pack knits and things that don’t wrinkle much. So I leave most clothes in the suitcase and pull them out as needed.

My husband though, the first time we traveled together, he put all his clothes in the hotel room’s dresser drawers! Who does that? Does anyone else do that? It never occurred to me. I guess I thought the dresser was only there to hold the TV! I’d worry about “out of sight out of mind” and check out of the hotel with my clothes still in the dresser drawers.

So my husband’s natural question, from his perspective, to the loss of the guest bedroom’s closet was: “Where are people going to hang their clothes?”

Ummmmm … I had no answer. I suppose it’s not a good answer to say I expect everyone to keep everything in their suitcases. Probably not generous host behavior, huh?

Then I thought … decorating opportunity. It’s an opportunity to do something different. Hooks would do the job. But not just any ol’ hooks.

These hooks:

It’s a collection of hooks and big drawer knobs from Hobby Lobby. I just pulled out different shapes, different patterns, and brown things and blue things from the bins. There’s ceramic, wood, metal, even twine! It was as easy as that.

And — a tip for saving a few dollars — download the apps from craft stores on your phone because there’s always a coupon, usually 40% off, right there in your phone! Because the day I needed hooks, Hobby Lobby unfortunately didn’t have their 50% off knobs and handles that seems to be going on every other time I go there except this one time. Of course that’s how the world works.

Here you see the knobs have different heights. Not a problem. I like the variation:

Setting them up like that for that photo gave me an idea to scatter them on the wall, all “El Fenn Riad-like:”

But frankly, with only five hooks, it looked bad any way you looked at it. It looked like I tried to line the hooks up but was too lazy to line them up. Maybe with 11 hooks it could have the “controlled confetti scatter” effect. But it wasn’t 50% off time, so no more hooks.

Here’s all the patched blotches to fix the holes after the first attempt:

Yepperdoodles, that’s exactly what you want to see when guests are arriving any second from overseas for their first trip to the U.S.!! When your wall finish has five colors in it including a glaze, otherwise the fixed spots will look flat and obvious! Which leads to another tip: Always keep your left-over paint and label the cans. I painted these walls 10 years ago. I was able to quickly find a few of the colors and dab them over the patches to blend it all in. Then I dried the wall with a hairdryer because the doorbell rang 120 seconds after I finished painting!

Do you ever answer the door after doing something crazy and try your best to come across cool and calm? People have no idea I was pointing a hairdryer at the wall when they were pulling in the driveway. People have no idea what crazy person they are coming to visit! Er, um, maybe NOW they do …

Why are some hooks blue on an orangey-paprika wall? Here’s why. There’s some brave color contrast in this room:

It also likely wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone but me that these are supposed to be hooks. So thus the hanger and the little demonstration with the bag there.

So if you need hooks, check out things that usually aren’t used as hooks!