That Gallery Wall

I know "everyone" has a gallery wall. I know there are a million pins on pinterest and a thousand blogs that will tell you hundreds of ways to hang a gallery wall...

And while I've never been one to follow a trend just because it's 'trendy'... you know like tall white socks with Adidas flip flops in the fourth grade. I didn't really like the look, so I never tried it. I never read Twilight because I saw the first movie and I got bored. BUT I did hear about Harry Potter and flock to see every movie and put "read all the books" on my to-do list. Why? ...because I liked it. Sometimes it's a coincidence,  you know like how I 'just happened' to start braiding my hair to the side right before Katniss hit the big screen.

Right?

Anyways, back to gallery walls. I LOVE them, lots of them. I like the idea of a wall of eclectic collection of frames and prints and momentos and wonderful little items that only you may know the entire special meaning of. Like someone else only sees a blue piece of fabric in a frame and you know that frame holds part of the napkin from your first date.

So I googled "gallery wall" and realized that while I LOVE gallery walls, I don't love ALL gallery walls. Couldn't put my finger on why I likes some more than others, so I raided pinterest and Houzz and I started 'liking' and 'pinning' every gallery wall I actually liked hoping to find similarities. Turns out I love the ones with prints and paintings and pictures that mean a lot, like maps and cool paper from a memory. I like the ones were the frames are mostly the same color. And I like the ones where the frames are mostly white. I do like the ones with little prints and pops of color rather than the ones with only black and white pictures of the most recent family vacation. I do understand that different people like different things, and so I'm not judging your gallery wall if it's black or black and white or spaced out. I just like the white or light ones that are so tightly spaced on the wall that it looks like each frame had to be purchased to fit that very spot. Maybe I just like organized clutter.

So I collected frames from garage sales and estate sales and even from the side-of-the-road trash. I got some from my mother-in-law and I bought a whole pack of black frames on Black Friday and spray painted those white last fall. Then I got so caught up in planning it out perfectly that I did nothing. Nothing but lay them out in the middle of the living room carpet...

And then Kyle said, let's hang these frames already. So I just went with it. I arranged the frames on the floor. Looking back I would have put my newsprint under the frames before I arranged them... but I didn't. So I just did this.

Yep I just laid newsprint right over the frames and traced the 'bumps' in the frame. (Making sure not to let the permanent marker go through the paper onto the frames). It was not perfect and not exact but I was trying new things...

We taped it on the wall and Kyle got to hanging with his level... and his wife hovering over his shoulder the entire time...

I did take a break from hovering to adjust some of the frames. I had some larger frames that were setup with wire to hang vertically when I wanted to hang them horizontally. So I switched the wire on some frames and changes the hanger on other frames. Some empty frames I wanted the wire to show... some I didn't. It was pretty simple.

Kyle finished up later in the night and in the nice yellow lighting ...

And then I took the most recent photos just today in a little better daylight...

You'll notice that we made a few furniture changes between the hanging the frames and the setting up the new thrift shop table for the pics today. We got a new fancy flat TV in the meantime and we moved the buffet to hold the TV. Which left the gallery wall floating on the wall between the buffet on the left and the door to the kitchen on the right. But I had kind of planned that... and while I'm still looking for the perfect chair for this space, the garage sale-find rocking chair did well subbing in.

Now I've just got to get all my prints, art, pictures collected up and ready to go for the frames. The two wooden frames will stay empty, but the large white frames actually have glass and backing so I can fill them with prints.

 

 

Then of course there's the lone balck frame that I missed during the spray painting. So as soon as the weather warms up, I'm spray painting it white... or maybe a fun color?

 

 

So we're here now. And I kind of love it...

 

As for the entire space, I'm ready to bring in some color on the table, with a fun chair, and filling the frames of course. But hey, the frames are off the floor, so at least we've got some progress...

...and why not get another close up of our new favorite wooden friends since it's Wednesday?

Happy Wednesday. Yay for progress, even if it's not perfect... it's better than frames on the floor. Anyone else with frames still on the floor? Anyone with incredible gallery walls they want to show off?

 

Update: My favorite pro bloggers at YHL posted about their gallery wall hanging using a large piece of paper TODAY too! Crazy coincidence... you have no idea. Check them out, they did it the non-lazy way and put the paper under the frames and have a great tip about measuring for nail holes. :)