Gallery Wall

For the first 3 months of living in our house we had no decorations upstairs.  Usually when you first move into a house after unpacking the first thing you do is make it feel homey by putting up decorations.  Because we had so much to do at first (painting, ripping up tile, carpeting, and more painting) we got so tired and just gave up on the whole decoration thing.

Now that things have slowed down we can now put up some decorations to make the house feel more like a home.  The first place to start.  Above the fireplace.

You can tell from this picture that despite our best efforts of filling holes and painting, you can still see damage to the wall above the fireplace.  I debated putting up a big mirror in the middle like this by my amazing sister in law at Simple Sage Designs, but it wouldn't cover up the far left and right part of the damage.  

So we decided to do a gallery wall.

I bought a bunch of different sized frames from my favorite budget friendly decor store lately (DI) and painted them all white.  

I filled the left upper two frames with leftover fabric I had.  The bottom left was a free printable that I found online.  The right two pictures are obviously art that I did myself…haha.  I will blog later about those two FREE projects. The middle frame is the only thing I paid for.  The wooden R was a few dollars from JoAnns on sale and the fabric was $1.  So this project including the frames cost a grand total of $10.

So I read several blogs about the best way to hang a gallery wall in one try without putting a million holes in your wall. A lot of blogs like this one said to use paper to cut out the exact size of each frame and tape those to the wall first and then use nails for the real frames.  If we had a larger gallery wall we probably would have done it, but we just positioned it on the ground the way we wanted it.  Other then that all you need is a tube of toothpaste (yes toothpaste) and another set of eyes.

So you put the toothpaste on the back of the frame where the nail would go like this.

Then you place it up on the wall where you want it using someone else behind you to tell you if it looks center (or how you want it).

And the toothpaste is left behind on the wall.  

So then you simply nail where the toothpaste is and wash it off.

Works like a charm.

So we kept doing that process picture by picture and it literally took 5 minutes.

No re-nailing.  There are only 6 holes in that wall.

 Here is Tyler enjoying our cosy living room after working up a sweat hanging pictures.