We have been in the sixth lockdown in Melbourne for 2 months. We have developed a bit of ‘lockdown fatigue’ and also found it hard to separate our work and life… since we have been working from home for 18 months.
Therefore, we took a 5-day break over the long weekend to ‘recharge’ ourselves though we could not travel anywhere (had to stay within 5 km radius). So we decided to do something different: putting together a world map on the wall for our new home.
We bought this 3D wooden world map online from Enjoy the Wood. Initially, we were worried that it might not arrive on time before our recharge day as it was shipped from Ukraine, and we were glad that it arrived in Melbourne in a week.
There are many companies selling this type of product over the internet, but I can only find one that has this colour (Nordik). So, we bought this as it matches very well with our grey colour couch. We bought the L size (150cm * 90cm) as we did not want it to be too small or too big.
Before putting on the wall, we first laid out the pieces on our dining table. The double sided tapes were included with the map, but we still bought our own 3M tapes because we were a bit nervous about sticking something on our plaster wall. We are more comfortable with 3M tapes as we have removed many of them in our old place without damaging the wall or leaving any marks (just by using dental floss).
The quality of the woods feel good and the 3D effects look really beautiful. The instructions were easy to follow – many of them were already stuck together in big pieces, but the small islands were the hardest. We made a few mistakes along the way and had to remove them using a dental floss.
This world map is not cheap ~about AUD $400 (including extra push pins and marks). But it is not too bad considering that it might cost about the same for a good painting of this size. We do not have too many decorations as we prefer a ‘minimalist’ style, so this has become the centrepiece of our home.
Furthermore, we think this is more meaningful for us as we both love to travel and have had great memories around the world. It brings joy to us as we put it piece by piece on the wall. We can ‘pin’ the countries that we have visited and also ‘mark’ the special event at any place of the world.
Though the website said the installation should take 1-2 hours, we ended up taking about 4 hours. Ben was very fussy as he wanted to make sure everything was placed as accurately as possible. He referred to Google Maps a lot rather than the map provided by the company.
Overall, it was a fun build. It was a bit of consolation when we cannot travel anywhere due to the pandemic and we miss travelling so much. It was very satisfying once everything is up, and we cannot stop looking at it. 🙂
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