gallery wall installation

I do many of my home projects by myself. Sometimes I run ideas by others and sometimes I just go for it. There are, however, some projects where it really helps to have some help. Whether it's just that extra set of hands or someone to bounce ideas off of, there are definitely times that I wish I had someone else around at midnight (or later) to run ideas by. This week with Kerry visiting I knew there were some projects that I wanted her help. She has great style and ideas and she can visualize like me. I loved having her around to hear her ideas or how she would tweak and idea that I had been thinking about.

I took advantage of a cloudy day when she was here and we set to work on putting together a gallery wall. I had the perfect space in my living room and I knew I had a stash of prints and picture frames. We spent one evening picking out the prints and framing the ones we chose to use. This was a bit of a crazy process there were frames and prints covering my entire floor! With so many prints to choose from we quickly realized that it was going to work best to cut out templates of each frame. This was a time consuming process, but I have to say that it was completely worth it! We used blue painters tape to tape the templates on the wall starting out with the largest frame somewhat centered. We worked out from that adding more. The templates and tape made it easy to change our minds and move things around.

The original plan was to take the prints all the way to the bottom, but I didn't quite have enough prints in frames to make that work. We left the templates up over night and decided to reassess in the morning. With fresh eyes the next morning we measured out where the hangers were on each frame and nailed hangers or nails on top of the templates and then simply pulled the template our from under the hangers. Working together we had all the prints on the wall in no time and I LOVE IT!

This is the only place in the house that I have art on the wall and I cannot stop staring at the wall. I'm thinking a narrow bench below and maybe some plants to add a little more oomph to the wall. Now I just need to find some indestructible house plants... any recommendations?

Comments

[Bryanna Gist]

Hi,

I came across your blog when I was Googling gallery wall ideas. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the suggestion to trace all of the frames and tape up templates to get a better idea of what things look like without the commitment of nailing them in the wall. I initially wasn’t going to but the longer I thought about it, the smarter it seemed.

Yes, it was a little time consuming to trace and cut them all out (I used wrapping paper) but my husband and I probably spent fifteen minutes rearranging our original layout and figuring out what we liked up on the wall. Since I had several frames that were the same size, we wrote what the picture was on the paper so there was no confusion later.

I don’t trust myself to nail things up (I end up with crooked nails) so I’m waiting for the weekend to make my husband do it. The templates and still on the wall and I can’t say there’s anything I would change.

Thanks Jenn!

[Jenn]

You're so welcome! I can't believe I'm just now seeing this comment. It did take some extra time and was worth it for sure. My gallery wall is still up with only a few swap outs for some some family portraits we had made :)