Modern Retro Home 40's style Hat display: Part 1 of 2

If you follow Willow Homestead you know how awesome BoPeep's farmhouse is. It is the epitome of vintage design. My house does not compare, but I can get there, in my own style. I do like a bit more modern style with retro touches. I have a 70's style ranch house which does not lend it self as easily to retro. I will pine away for my dreamhouse, but for now I aim to do some restyling of my current home.

I accquired a new dresser last winter and so our other dresser was moved out to the dining room where it serves as storage space. I bought some baskets to bring some organization to the morning chaos (Where's your gloves?") and once I got all like things together I realized...we have a lot of HATS!

The hat situation!

I hardly wore any of them since they were never at hand when it came time to walk out the door.
I am not fond of hat displays that consist of hats merely hanging on the wall and closet organizers seriously lack style. It occurs to me that maybe I should have a mirror to try on hats in front of and hey..I have a mirror that's been sitting in my bedroom collecting dust. Can you see the lightbulb over my head lighting up?

The flat screen has taken it's place and it needs a new home.

 I love the look of patterned tin and love mixing textures so, a trip to my local home improvement store was in order. There I found tons of ideas, but let's keep it to a minimum shall we? First I found the "tin" in big sheets made of plastic. They had several different finishes and my plan was to paint the white a hammered silver, but we know how plans go, and it ended up staying white.
I also found textured paint in suede for the hat wall, and got a pretty blue paint to coordinate.
I also planned to frame the "tin" out with some trim, but I wanted some depth and more texture so I sent my guy out to the farm to look for old barn boards,....the older the better. He did well despite his inability to share my vision.
So after the coats of lovely suede paint covered the wall, it was time for the barnboards. I gave my guy the dimensions and he added a brace to support the mirror.

I  nailed the "tin" into place after cutting it to my desired size. I wanted to leave some of that great weathered barn wood showing.

Next, comes the hard part, marking where the nails will go to hang the mirror.

Not too hard, and looking good!

I originally got some robe hooks for hanging our hats on, but was lucky to have a salewoman lead me to these lovely retro looking hooks at Pier1.

There were many choices, but I decided upon the moths and peacock.

Now to reorganize and assemble our growing hat collection...ta da!

It looks much more put together, and he even said it looked great. How could he doubt me?
I may add another decorative hook on the small wall adjacent to the door but all my hats are now in their place.
Stay tuned for the remaining dining room restyle in Part 2, where I figure out how to display my vintage cherry cocktail napkins.