Art Above the Door?

Figuring out what to do with the bayonet I inherited from my grandpa was a frustrating endeavor, but finally, I decided to have it framed. Figuring out where to hang it, however, proved to be even more vexing.

But the other night, I curled up with a stack of design magazines and as I read House Beautiful, a brilliant idea popped into my head - to hang it above the door in my entry hallway (well ok, it was also idea #36 in the magazine's 101 Easy Makeovers article.)

My grandpa, a marine mechanic, found the bayonet on Okinawa during World War II; when I was a kid, he'd get it out from time to time and start telling stories. He didn't see battle, so his stories were pleasant tales of army buddies and foreign cultures and a young man, a kid really, seeing the world for the first time.



My brother and my cousins and I gathered around him, enthralled and used his words as a vehicle to experience a life more glamorous, more dangerous than the one we were living in the small town (or was it a village?) an hour outside Chicago. When my grandpa died and then my grandma, we all wanted that sword. But using military-like maneuvers, I won that particular battle (and in my mind, that may as well have been the war).

So even though the bayonet is really just a souvenir and my grandpa didn't use it to make war, its presence above the door seems somehow protective. While the idea of hanging it above a door seemed counterintuitive in theory, it works perfectly in practice. (But I won't be trying idea #101 which involves adding something purple, which I hate, to a room when all else fails).

Have you tried this? How did it work? And does mine work?