can anyone tell me where i can find an extra-large poster frame? i have a poster that's about 33x46 and haven't had any luck yet. low-end preferred :)

Did you try Pearl Paint framing shop on Lispenard? I got a cheapy 16 x 20" frame there last week for $12.

no, but i will now... thanks!

Lee's Art in midtown has some DIY frames/framing supplies. Or try Michael's in the 'burbs. There are also lots of online sources that let you buy the length and the width separately, and you assemble with provided hardware.

Or for the price of a miter box and hand saw, some wood glue and finishing nails, and molding, you can do it totally yourself. I used to do lots of my own framing. Until I got addicted to the high price professional stuff. ;)

There's also those strips of tubular metal that get affixed to the top and the bottom of the piece, available at the MoMA store (momastore.org)

Would any of these stores have smaller wooden frames and precut mats? I want to do a wall of lithographs and vintage linen postcards and am looking for a lot of cheap, identical frames and mats.

Lee's has precut mats. So does Sam Flax. They both should have frames. Try also Exposuresonline.com and Target.

Ikea has lots of frames...a pretty big poster size as well

new question: i'm using carpet remnants to cover areas of carpet that are excessively worn (e.g. bedroom doorways) but they keep shifting around. i've tried looking for products to counteract this, but they mostly seem to be designed for use w/ hard floors only. any tips for how to keep them in place on top of carpet? (it's berber carpet, if that makes any difference.)

also, can anyone suggest a good diy method of treating the cut edges so that they don't keep unraveling? (i'm sure that there are places where you can get carpet remnants professionally bound, but i just moved into my current place & need to watch expenses...)

I need paint color help. I have a 40's vintage bathroom, tiled half-way up the walls with a pale yellow tile, edged in black. The soap dish and cup/toothbrush holder (integral tile) are also black. This is a very small room with a shower, a window, and a door, with what feels like a very high ceiling due to the small dimensions of the room. I don't like yellow very much, and would like to tone it down. Any paint color families you all would suggest I look at? Budget doesn't permit retiling.

Cate-
My bathroom is the same as yours, except that instead of pale-yellow-and-black, mine is peach-and-black. Have a look at the recent "My Bathroom Rocks" contest elsewhere on this site, and you'll see "Curtis' Peachy Cream Late Deco Loo."

OK, it's not the same color, and you might want to go a totally different way, but first off, if you want to tone down that yellow, do NOT go "just the opposite" which, in your case would be lavender. The previous owners of my bathroom did "just the opposite" which was a blue-grey. It actually made the peach tiles look like a very intense orange.

One thing that might be safe is to do SORT of what I did. Actually, I created stencils by photocopying onto cardstock an old wallpaper sample from an old sample book I got on eBay, which might be WAY too much trouble, except that if you DO, it makes it all look VERY intentional, and less like you're just stuck with this very strange bird you feel like you have.

Anyway, for your wall color, you can do what I did for the BACKGROUND color of that fake wallpaper. I decided against the exact color in the sample book (which had been a greyish white), and opted for an ivory color that was used in the field tile in the floor. Because that made it blend in with the bathroom without introducing any new color.

IF your floor tiles are something other than that same pale yellow, try matching paint chips with that. If it looks like they're just white, don't just buy white, look very carefully to find the right one.

Otherwise, you might try to find a pale green that you like for the walls, because green has some yellow in it, and will help it blend a little, while still pulling you away from it.

Re: big posters - I have a huge poster/print and in lieu of framing it, I had it mounted on foamboard. Then I bought four of the biggest size 3-M command adhesive sticky hooks, painted them a coordinating color with my poster, and hung it with two hooks on the bottom and two hooks upside down on the top. It looks great and minimal and I can move it around with ease! No holes in the walls if you rent, either.
(PS I love this site!)

A friend of mine wants to take a big map poster, linen back it an put it on a roll-down thingy like a class room map. I'm not certain about the roll-down mechanics, but you can get a poster linen-backed at any framing store for relatively cheap, and it's reversible, so it's safe for vintage or art posters

For the roll-down mechanics, you can roll-up window shades at most hardware stores. If you can't find one near you, I'm pretty sure that Grand Metro on Broadway on the SouthEast corner of 96th Street has them.

And I'm pretty sure they cut them to the width of your window. In your friend's case, it would be to the width of her linen-backed poster.

If you really didn't need for it to go up and down, you could get four lengths of half-round molding and sandwich end of the poster between two of them. You might want to have them stick out enough on each side, so that the ends of the top resulting "stick" could hang off J-hooks on the wall. Then, if you were semi-ambitious, you could even find nice wooden finals for each end of them.

Curtis -- yes, I noticed your bathroom in the contest, and I was very impressed by it. However, my bath is even smaller than yours, and I'm afraid that any patterning at all is going to make it look more cluttered than it already does. I like the idea of going with a green -- I think I'll hit Benjamin Moore this weekend and get some of those little sample tubs of paint. Thanks.

Cate--
I'd actually start by looking at fabric for shower curtains instead of starting with paint, and find one that makes sense of the yellow and black in a way you like, then see what other color answers the fabric provides you.

A celery might be fun, but an aqua might be more Deco-ish.

If you decide to throw in the towel, you can epoxy paint the tiles. I have pepto-bismol pink tiles in my place in Atlanta, and have been dreaming of epoxying them white for ages. I've already modernized most of the rest of the condo, and these tiles just date the whole place. Has anyone here tried this, and would they recommend it?

I should say I have seen it done, and I thought it looked great. And looks pretty inexpensive if Home Depot is correct. But seeing it and DIYing it can be two different things....

Just to give you a complete idea of what I'm up against, let me describe the room more fully. It is literally about 6'x6'. There is a shower on the far wall, not included in the 6x6 footprint above. It has a glass door with chrome scrollwork at the top (which is its own issue, as the chrome is corroded badly).

The yellow tiles are pale color, and the yellow is fairly true -- I'd say it's close to scrambled egg in hue, but not quite as intense.

There is a black border along the top of the tiles, along the floor, and around the entrance to the shower. There are 3 towel bars, all with black ceramic tile ends and the rod is wood and painted black (can't really imagine anything else would work with the ends). There's a lot of black going on, in other words -- more than in Curtis' case.

The floor is also yellow with black. I imagine painting the tile would be a possibility, but I would worry about durability.

I won't even go into the difficulties of the other bath which is a really weird bluish-gray, along with the ubiquitous black.

Thanks for the advice -- I'll follow up with what I do!

I'm worried about the durability of exopy paint on my floor tiles, as well. But I figure if my father can exopy paint his garge floor and park a Chevy on it, it's likely to withstand my wet tooties a couple times a day. ; )

Cate. Have you considered a vertically striped wallpaper? I found a great pearl grey-and-white striped paper online that might work in your bathroom. The vertical stripes would accentuate the height of the room, since it is a bit cramped. And you could play off of the wallpaper with a white damask-striped shower curtain, white rectangular rug with an inlaid (or stitched) accent border, and white towels with a subtle accent stripe (probably in pearl grey)--think old-school hotel luxe. There's no getting around deco color scheme of the tiles, floor and accessories. So, you may as well play up the formality of the room and only introduce the neutral colors (white, grey) to tone down the butter yellow/black.

Doug. Since you own, I would stay away from epoxy-spraying over your existing tile. I once lived in a rental in which this was done (in a bright white) in both the kitchen and bathroom. While it did look clean and instantly updated, I found that the finish could peel away in bits if the surface was broken. It seems like a moderately expensive short-term fix to me. Better to wait until you have the money (or equity) to do a complete renovation. That way you can make the changes you really want. But, if you do go this route, hire someone who specializes in resurfacing so that get a good even spray. Definitely not a DIY project.

Cate--
You've probably just described about a million bathrooms. My mom's is like that (and Curtis') but insert "weird blue green" in the "scrambled egg yellow" slot.

Start with the showr curtain, like this striped one from Gump's:
http://www.gumps.com/product.asp?product=137805zz&dept%5Fid=1822

Cate -
One other stripe idea; a friend of mine with an emerald green and black version of what you and I have had me paint 5-inch wide HORIZONTAL stripes around the room, which are actually very period. I saw some in an old late-1930's brochure for American Standard bathroom fixtures. That look was also worked in the recently-closed production of the Broadway musical "42nd Street" in the set piece that portrayed the fancy dressing room of the big star of the show within the show.

Based on his colors, we did a grey and lighter version of his green for those stripe.

And yes, that epoxy paint can chip. I've seen it happen.

I agree with Curtis about the possibility of horizontal stripes... they will push your walls out, visually.

Thank you all so much for the ideas! I'm really impressed. I like the idea of playing up the formality of the room. I don't think the horizontal stripes would work in this room, because each wall is so broken up by a feature (vanity/medicine cabinet on one wall, shower on the other, large window on the third and then toilet with shelving above and entry door on the fourth.) There really isn't much wall.

I can't do shower curtain because of the glass door (there isn't any way to remove it without leaving a big scar in the tile), BUT it does now occur to me that the large window is about the potentially strongest feature in the room, and that I could do something there. It presently has a plain shade which is always down. Hmmmmmm.

How about ceiling-to-floor pleated curtains (or pre-made drapes) to flank the window and a simple semi-sheer blind for some privacy while allowing light? If the large window is the only feature on that wall, it might be fun to have the drapes extend out to each corner--creating the impression of a much wider window, and covering most of the tilework along that wall. You can coordinate bath linens accordingly...

Cate:

I realize this is an old discussion, but I couldn't resist telling you that I have the identical yellow and black tile bathroom in my 1948 house, right down to the soap dish, toothbrush holder, tile bars, etc. The floor is smaller yellow and black tiles, probably the same as yours. I am in the middle of a low-impact remodel of it, in fact. My husband wanted to gut the whole thing, but I insisted that we keep the tiles and make it a retro-deco bathroom. Neither of us are crazy about the bumblebee colors, but I felt really strongly that we should preserve the original tiles. I painted the walls a color called "banana cream", which is a cream that is just barely yellow. I am going to emphasis the black elements by installing a black Silestone counter ("Black Anubis"). I hung a black and tan matchstick shade on the large window. And I have a vintage 1940s airbrush print of Cockatoos hanging on the wall. I replaced the old medicine cabinet with Kohler's vintage-style cabinet with the arched top. And I installed sconce lights that have a geomtric deco feel. It looks fabulous!