Great idea! It looks wonderful.

I have the same problem, this is a great idea!

I'm not crazy about the fabric but still think the hanging is a vast improvement.

I cover those boxes all the time mirrors and are can always do the trick. Sometimes I paint them too to match the wall.

I've done the same, but using a piano hinge on one side and velcro on the other so the picture will just swing out and not require removal from the wall.

We had the same problem in our bedroom of all places. We had a box built around it and used some old glass windows as "doors" for the box. I added some of the stain glass film that you can put on regular windows then added a light timer and some lights. Now our "window" brings light into our bedroom every morning, right on time. Saw something like it while touring a Gaudi mansion in Spain.

Nice job! Wow, are all American circuit boxes that big?

nanakk -- That is a big box for an apartment, but not unusual for a house.

I have a painting over mine -- hung from the "picture molding" so very easy to pull aside if I never need to access the circuit breakers.

Had the same problem in my old apartment, and used a similar solution! In my case, I opted to hang a framed movie poster over the box. I like brett's idea of using a piano hinge! The circuit box in my house is pretty well disguised, so I'm happy to say I no longer have this problem. ;-)

Yeah, I did the same thing as Brett. My circuit box is next to my light switches and the intercom box for the front entry. I bought a large mirror, screwed 1.5 inch blocks to the four corners and hinged it so that it would hide everything, provide the depth needed and still keep the ugly utilities accessible.

Good for you! :)

We had the same problem, also in our bedroom . We placed a wardrobe in front of it. We had to as there was not other place a wardrobe would fit and we cut out a big square out of the back panel of the wardrobe to allow acces to the circuit box.
And No it is not illegal or dangerous as far as we know, and we have never had coments on it from either the electrician or the people who come to check the electrical eter.

Ours is in the kitchen and it's a huge eyesore. Right next to it is a giant wall phone mount/jack. Since I rent, I can't pull the jack apart, so I hung a large whiteboard over the fuse box and screwed some small containers onto the jack, using the screws that hold the plate to the wall. Now we have dry-erase markers and erasers hanging right by the white board! Done and done.

We used very small magnets to put up photos on ours. It makes for a great montage of places we’ve been, family, friends, places we still want to go…I’ve thought about putting a frame around it but my husband likes its undefined shape. Everyone stops to look but no one knows what its really hiding!

Ours is in our master bedroom on the wall - since I moved here, I keep buying oversized calendars with pretty pictures to cover it. So I get something better to look at and I can also use it...I'd be more afraid to hang art over it since I'd be using nails instead of tacks and I can just literally lift up the calendar. Art I'd have to totally take it off the wall.

That looks great! My great-aunt had a box like that in the bedroom of her house. She painted it to look like a window with a scene outside and turned it into a work of (folk) art. (My grandmother did something similar with a crack on the ceiling of an apartment she lived in. She painted it to look like a grapevine. When she moved the new tenants told the landlord they'd take the place if he left the painted grapevine.)

I have one in my kitchen. Just hung a framed picture over it, then a couple of smaller pictures to the left of it to make everything look centered. You can't tell it's there and the picture is easy to remove if needed.

we also put magnets on ours, poetry magnets, so our fuse box (located in our hallway) is an interactive poetry display

I actually covered mine with a painting of a circuit box:)
http://www.danjrichards.com/slides/24-IMG_3974

http://www.danjrichards.com/

I have one of these in my bedroom. Luckily, ours is similar to the wall color. I camouflaged it with some tall grasses.

They are metal usually so use magnetic hooks to hang things. Mine is in my laundry room though.

I did something like this but then my husband screamed at me for randomly nailing into a wall full of electrical circuts, apparently he thinks i could have killed myself doing that!

I covered mine too with a Faile painting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ext212/4384055495/in/set-72157623316304884/

I just did something similar - I attached soft velcro to the back of a printed dish towel (Tikoli mummy2) and then attached the the corresponding velcro to magnetic tape. The magnetic tape holds onto the circuit box and removes easily. It makes the stairwell look so much better!

djrich4= genius!

Am I the only one who thinks this isn't such a great idea?? Don't get me wrong: it looks lovely. BUT, if you live in an apartment building and if at any point something is amiss and the super, or an electrician, or the fire dept or whoever needs to get into your apt and you're not there and can't be reached, unless they know exactly where your box is located, you're not helping them getting to the box quickly.

A (less elegant) solution is probably to ... paint the box? Some light paint would considerably diminishing the ugliness...

Uhm, here's something my electrician pointed out during our recent remodel. Circuit boxes, especially ones from the 60s and 70s can spark under the right circumstances. If you have something flammable in front of them you then have a FIRE. Ours was in a closet, so the risk was clothing...aka, fabric!

We flipped ours into the wall of our front hallway and hung a metal framed mirror in front of it. No spark risk there and it got the electrician's okay.

Just a safety something to consider...but I agree it looks good.

Just make sure anybody visiting or house-sitting knows where to find the box! That's always when somebody accidentally overloads a circuit and needs to know!

Mine's in the entryway to my apt. and just painted the same as the walls - it's small and real high up, so hardly noticeable. A former neighbor of mine had painted hers a bit more creatively - each plane was a different different color (our do not lay flat and have some angles to them).

I put a blackboard to cover mine and urge my guests to leave a witty saying...sometimes we use it as message board.

The photos-attached-with-magnets idea sounds really cute, but I bet it would be unpleasant to take all of the photos off when you break a circuit at night and have no light...

Why oh why do builders' put these where they do??? It's like, "Let's pick a focal wall, and THEN put this HUGE box on it OFF CENTER."

And in that after, the table is too small now. Art that's too wide for the stuff beneath it is like a fat lady in a miniskirt.

hi all !

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looks great!