I had to take everything off the downstairs walls when I painted them.

These are things that had been hanging for almost 20 years.

There was a corner of my living area that was kind of devoted to Gary Carter - a few pictures of him, a poster from his Mets Hall of Fame induction, some baseball cards - and a lot of other baseball-related stuff.

I have finished painting all of the walls downstairs on which these pictures would hang…so on Sunday night I put some of them back up.

What you see pictured above is the bar area, where I put most of them.

You see the poster from Billy Joel’s Last Play At Shea there on the right - that used to be a pretty central piece of the downstairs wall hangings. Next to it I put a 7 Line stop metal plate my brother had gotten me years ago. I felt like those two items still belonged together, so I put the Billy Joel poster over the subway stop sign. I liked how that turned out.

On the left you see the dartboard - I took that down from the wall to paint behind it and I wasn’t quite sure it was going to go back up.

It was a struggle, but Kathy and I got it lined up with the giant holes still in the wall back there, and I think it will make it. (If you’re ever over here playing darts, just don’t tug on that dartboard or the surrounding cabinet.)

Then to the right of the dartboard I had an idea that I’m pretty proud of - I hung three pictures that were kind of spread out in the old layout - the top one is a picture of the Polo Grounds, the middle one is Mookie Wilson’s grounder going through Bill Buckner’s legs from Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, and the bottom one is the first Opening Day at Citi Field. (I was there!) (But it’s not my photo.)

Those are the 3 ballparks the Mets called home from top to bottom - the middle one happened at Shea Stadium.

So I thought that was a cool layout.

I still have a Chicago Marathon poster, a painting of my brother playing guitar we bought off a friend of his, and my old cutout from the pandemic year of baseball that sat at Citi Field.

I don’t know if those latter two will stay out - I had them sitting on top of my mini fridge down here for a couple of years - but I would like to find room for the Chicago Marathon poster - maybe I’ll wait and see what this year’s poster looks like and whether I can put the two of them up. (It’s a big poster. I’d love to put it in the workout space but there’s not enough wall room there.)

Speaking of Chicago, I also had a Wrigley Field souvenir of the center field scoreboard hanging in this bar area that I decided when I hung the Billy Joel poster that I’d move to the office, so it’s there now. I can rearrange stuff in there at another time.

I have an entire wall now, where the Gary Carter stuff used to hang, and where the Billy Joel/7 Line stuff used to be, that has nothing on it.

I guess that’s a possibility for the Chicago Marathon posters…but it seems like maybe I should put up some family photos over there.

I’m happy with it, though - I think it all looks nice so far.