Live & Learn -- Custom Framing

We moved into our new house a little over a year ago now, and I'll admit it's taken us a while to settle in. That's what happens when you practically quadruple your square footage and decide that you don't want all your furniture to come from IKEA anymore.

 

So one month, one room, and one paycheck at a time, we've been working on furnishing and decorating our new home. And as you can imagine, as Baby Boy's birthday looms and my nesting instincts kick in full force, my franticness to get the house in order has taken on a new level of hysteria.

 

This week we focused on the media room upstairs.

 

A couple years ago, Stew's dad gave him a whole trunk full of stuff from his childhood bedroom, and it contained all kinds of cool sports memorabilia. I thought it would be fun to have some of the posters framed and hang them in the media room, giving it a sort of "sports" theme (whatever you do, DO NOT call it a Man Cave).

 

Hence the lessons I learned about custom framing.

Watch out my friends... what a complete and total scam!

 

I had heard that custom framing can be quite expensive, so I started gathering some handy dandy coupons in order to make it affordable for us. I mean hot damn, look at these deals! 70% off at Michaels and 60% off at Aaron Brothers... a steal of a deal!

 

 

Oh poor, naïve Sarah.

 

First, we went into Michaels to get a price quote, and excitedly reviewed the custom framing package pricing on the wall. We had three 24x36 posters, so we saw we could get a deluxe package including the frame, assembly, two mats and glass for just $205 a poster... and that would be before our 70% off coupon was applied! Totally affordable. We had the sales person do some mockups for us and then she crunched the numbers. This is where Stew almost lost his mind...

 

 

Our quote was $290 PER POSTER, which included the 70% discount! I'm sorry, but that math just did not add up for us. When Stew asked why the price was so much more expensive than advertised, the girl just shrugged and said, "Those prices aren't even remotely correct; I have no idea why we even have them up there. But as you can see you're saving $471 per poster, so this is an excellent deal."

 

So the advertised price of $205 was really $761 for one stinking poster.

 

Needless to say, we walked away.

 

Next door at Aaron Brothers, we marched into the framing section and immediately asked if the prices on the wall were accurate, or if they were completely unrealistic like Michaels. Here, the sales person apologetically explained that indeed, the advertised prices weren't really realistic. But then she went immediately to the computer and started crunching numbers to try and help us find a cost effective way to have our posters framed.

 

Eventually we found a solution: Buying frames off the sales floor, and then paying for a framing services package that included dry mounting, preservation spacing and fitting, and hardware on each frame. All for a grand total of $344 for all three posters. Not bad, considering that I originally thought that custom framing would be about $100 per poster.

 

And I think they turned out pretty well! 

 

 

So live and learn, folks: custom framing is NOT necessarily affordable, but some stores are much better than others at working within your budget. So be sure you shop around!

 

 

This has been another edition of

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