That turned out really nice. The "functional and attractive" aspect of those RealTraps is, well, attractive. Can they be painted or is that a standard color?
The fabric is an odd-looking spun fabric that I don't think would be paintable, but it works so well I wouldn't even want to try to mess with it. They come standard in white, wheat, black and grey. I picked white, obviously, which is sort of a mottled off-white. I thought a dark color would make the room feel too closed-in.
However, they can also be bought with Guilford fabric, the burlap looking stuff you see on tons of office furniture and office dividers, in all the Guilford colors. I'm not fond of Guilford fabric, but if you order it that way they wrap it around the frame for a more uniform look.
The frames are powder-coated, so they're not shiny, and the traps look less ugly in person than in a photo. Most importantly, they work really, really well.
Eventually, I'll re-mount them with stand-off brackets instead of the picture wire type mounting I used. These are steel brackets that RealTraps offers, to mount the stuff an inch or two from the wall surface, and you don't get that tilt near the top like you do with a picture-style hanging method, where the tops are further out from the wall than the bottoms. There are mounting rails for the bracket on the back of each trap, so they don't show in the room. It takes three brackets per trap, so for me that's a permanent commitment I'll put off for now!
I used the single screw/picture wire method to minimize holes in the walls until I make sure everything sounds the best I can get it. I'll switch to the more permanent brackets once I'm confident that I can't improve the sound by moving things around a little.
But yeah, it worked perfectly and the ambient noise was whisper quiet.
