A New Gallery Wall - Progress

Hello and happy Thursday to one and all. I know that Valentine's day is quickly approaching and lots of other blogs are just riddled with great ideas for crafts and recipes, but I just cannot get into it. We have never been ones to make a big deal about it, so it's hard to find things that I want to do. At least next year Braxton will be older and give me a reason to find fun things to do.

So after getting that off my chest, today I want to share an idea that is about a year in the making. When we decided to do the basement, one of Luis' biggest requests was to not have the gallery wall back up in the basement. He hated how the pictures would move if the volume was turned up, or my complaining about the pictures moving. Jury's still out on that one, and Luis is not telling the truth.

So once it was decided that the basement was no longer the location for the gallery wall, I needed to find a new home for it. After sitting on the couch with a newborn/baby for a few months in our living room, and idea dawned on me. Enter the wall that I have never known what to do with (view from the living room):

Here is the view from the dining room, which really shows how long the wall is. It also shows the corner of the living room a little better:

 
This wall connects the living and dining room together, which are open to each other and is 22 feet long. It was like a light went off and I realized that this was the perfect location for the gallery wall! It's a great way to tie the two rooms together, which I have always struggled with. We used to have a hutch centered under the dropped area dividing the rooms, but it really crowded the dining room table.

So we moved the hutch and turned it into an entertainment stand (which I will share another day), and moved our cedar chest into the room (mostly because it had nowhere else to live). Then it was time to start the gallery wall. I have a vinyl saying that I knew I wanted to be the centre of the gallery, so the first step was to find where I wanted it to go. I tried a few combinations:

Not quite....:

Still not right:

Perfect! Don't mind the fact that the saying is a little "off", I am planning on turning this into wood art down the road. The vinyl is not sticking to the wall anymore due to cats laying against it while it was temporarily in our spare bedroom. I just wanted to find where the saying would go so I would be able to make room for a piece of art down the road. Here is a view of the whole wall with the vinyl saying:

I know it looks a little off centre, and that's because it is. The dropped part of the ceiling is actually about 2 feet from the centre of the wall. I tried to make the gallery wall more toward the centre of the wall, instead of being centred with the ceiling. Once this was done, it was time to move onto the frames.

I didn't take any pictures of my process because it was pretty much just holding up frames until I liked the placement and then using command strips to hang them. Braxton was a huge help with this process, or the main reason I did it this way. I used command strips for this because we found with our first gallery wall that when the pictures moved the wall look terrible. I didn't want to have to worry about constantly straightening pictures, so it was worth the extra cost to make sure they would always be straight.

Here is the gallery wall now:

I still have more picture frames to hang, but need spring to come before I do. I have to spray paint a few frames, which will not work very well with two feet of snow outside. So until I can get those frames up, this is how it stays. Hence, the word progress in the title.

Here are a few more shots of the whole wall:

I know it doesn't look the greatest yet, but give it some time. I still have to replace the pictures, and of course hang the rest of the frames. Once I get that done, I will share the finished wall with you guys. I am hoping to be able to add a few pieces of personalized art into the wall, which I will also share.

So that's it for now! Hopefully you guys don't hate me for posting a half finished project, but I have worked pretty hard on it. It's one of those bigger project I have been working on, and I am pretty proud of it. 

What about you, do you have a gallery wall? Or any art in your house that you have made or just love? Feel free to share.

Kerby 

Linking to:
A Night Owl - Monday Funday 2/15/15 
Naptime Creations - Create, Link, Inspire #216 
I Heart Naptime - Link Party Palooza #85 
A Handful of Everything - Great Idea Thursdays #90