Kitchen Wall Re-do

As I stated before John and I have been living in a frat house for 9 years. Seriously.  We left the original owner's paint colors for 6 years before painting ourselves.  We only hung things where there was an available nail hole.  And our decorating and furniture was reminiscent of a college student's.  It's embarrassing.  So these past few months I've been pretty focused on redecorating.  The family room (with the new sectional) is about 90% or more done. I need a few finishing touches but it looks good as is.  My next part that I want to redecorate is the eat-in area of the kitchen.  I focused most recently on the area above the microwave.  Now I don't have any real good pictures of what it looked like before but here's one from back in the day that sort of shows it.

Look behind Anne and you can see how bare the walls are.  This picture was taken 4 years ago and nothing has changed. All that was on that wall was a French board and a calendar.  So without further ado here's what it looks like now.

Here's what I did:

~The bottom picture shows the letter A on a black back ground.  I got the back ground as an unpainted piece of pre-cut wood.  I painted it black.  The letter A was a loose letter that I painted gold and then glued to the board.  The total cost for this was under $4!

~Below that are some hanging file folders.  I got those on Amazon for $25.  It took me months to find some I liked that were a good price.  I'm still not in love with these but they were certainly the best I could find after looking for so long.

~Next to the file folders is a wooden chalkboard.  Got it on sale at Meijer for only $10!

~Original French board-not moved or changed.

~"It is well with my soul" picture that was on clearance at Meijer for only $9.  What a steal!

All in all I am pretty pleased with how the wall turned out.  I'm even more pleased that I found some great pieces for such a low price.

My next project is to tackle the back wall of this room.  I already have a good idea of what I want to do I just need to put it all together.