Hi! I hope everyone is back to their appropriate routines. My daughter finally went back to school today (school being used loosely here, since she’s in nursery school, for just shy of nine hours a week. It’s glorified babysitting), so I can get myself back into some sort of grind. I started back to the gym, and holy mackerel, I am sore. I need to build up some stamina. Always the first to go, that stamina.
I told you about the lovely two story foyer (said with sarcasm), the other day. Because the walls are so tall, I have been trying to find a way to break up wall along the stairs. Five years we’ve been here, and I’m just now finally figuring out what I want for the wall. I’ve wanted a photo collage for as long as I can remember, but I could never figure out where it would look good, and I wasn’t sure what our plans were for closing that space off. Since it’s going to be a little while, and not having my walls filled with things I love drives me crazy, I started the long task of putting together a rough idea of what I wanted. Here’s the before:
I know that the carpet matches the wall, and it just seems so neutral. We’re hoping to have the carpets replaced with hardwood, eventually. Everything eventually, right? Also, mind the dog hair on the stairs. Lab hair! You can never get it out of the carpet.
When I started this project, I made a firm decision that I wanted to have it not cost me a mint, and also have it look a bit eclectic. So I found as many frames as I could around the house, and most of the rest are from thrift stores. Save for two frames from Ikea. Most of the frames were about $1-3, and when you see the final result, you see why I wanted to keep the cost down. I have a bit of a photo hoarding problem. And I love having pictures of loved ones around me. And I like them all, so I have a hard time swapping pictures out. This is a great solution for someone like me. I did have some criteria though. My frames had to be either, white, black, or silver. Since a lot of thrift store frames are somewhat ugly and not any of these colors, spray paint was an obvious fix to this. I want to say I started this project in the fall. But honestly, I don’t even remember. It’s been THAT long.
First thing you want to do, is take an inventory of your pictures. I kept a list of all of the pictures that needed frames and their sizes. That way, if I was out, I didn’t have to wonder what I needed. Not that you can’t always use extra frames.
Once I had everything assigned to a frame (and I’m skipping a lot, because again, this was a project I did over the span of months, because it wasn’t a burning project), I took some newsprint we had lying around, and started to trace every frame:
Don’t ask me why my paint key is sitting in the middle of the floor. It’s the same reason why there’s a giant stuffed bear in my bathtub and legos on my bed.
As I traced, I labeled every “picture” on the page, so I that I knew exactly which picture it was. This is an important part. If you’re doing a big collage like this, trust me, you’ll want to label the pictures.
Once everything was labeled and cut out, I arduously arranged everything on my wall. I used my handy Green Frog painters tape. to attach it:
My best advice, once you do this, is to leave it for a day or two, so that you can walk by it and see what might drive you crazy. I made a few switches to my arrangement, before going ahead.
I used simple picture hanger hooks. They’re easy to use, hold a lot of weight, and are super inexpensive.
Usually, when I hang a picture, it involves anchors, screws, measuring, and leveling. I really didn’t want a bunch of anchors to take out of my walls if and when I ever wanted to do something different with that wall. Plus, it would have added a lot more time to the project.
Once I had my final placement, I simply put the frame against the paper with a hook out so that it would make an indent where I wanted to place my nail. You could also use a dab of paint on the hook as well. Once I did that, I attached my hanger on top of the paper, and then removed the paper before attaching the picture to the wall.
Working my way up. The hanging method isn’t scientific, obviously, but it worked out really well for the most part.
And the finished result, from the top:
And from the bottom:
I love how eclectic and imperfect it is. I thought that it would bother me, given that I have a touch of OCD, but it gives the wall a nice mish mash of looks. I no longer feel empty inside when I walk down my stairs.
It totally reminds me of picture walls that I used to see in other people’s houses when I was a kid. What’s old is new again.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Looks really good. I am getting ready to tackle a similar project and this gives me great ideas on how to do it. My wall will be a long wall as you walk into the house – and I want it to contain mostly still life/landscape type photos that my son & I have taken. Originally I was going to go with the same frame in different sizes for all the photos. But looking at your wall, I’m wondering if it would be more interesting to do the mishmash of frames. In either case, I definitely have a lot of prep work ahead of me… I’ve been putting it off for a while now!
Amy, if they’re in black and white, you may want to go with all the same black frames. I chose the eclectic look because all of the pictures were a mish mash. Not that it would look bad either way.
I love this! I had a similar wall at our old home but haven’t yet tackled this sort of project in our ‘new’ house. (New is in quotes because as of August, we’ll have been in this house for two years, that doesn’t really allow me to call it new any longer.) I’ve started going up the stairs with the girls’ school pictures (third grade and preschool) but I think I’m going to have to steal your idea and add more just because I love the way yours looks so much.
I love candids. I hardly have any portrait type pictures. Even when I hire someone, I get someone who does “real life” type pictures. I probably should do that more often.
Love this! I’ve spent the last two years we’ve lived here s l o w l y filling in our walls with photos, and the annoying part is having to arrange as I go. Once I amass a final collection, I may do your trick with the paper and arrange them all at once, rather than knocking myself out again and again to try to get it (temporarily) perfect.
Betsy, the paper is the easiest way I’ve found to do something of this magnitude. Otherwise, I would have had tons of holes in my walls.