Creating a gallery wall

It’s taken about three weeks, but I finally have art up on the wall in my upstairs hallway.

Here’s what the hallway looked like before. It’s right at the top of our stairs, and I always felt like it would be perfect for a gallery wall but I just never got around to making a plan and following through with it. (I blogged about my ragtag art collection waiting to be hung — while I procrastinated — here.)

The largest piece I wanted to hang was this 30″ x 25″ oil painting of a church. There was already a hanger screwed into (roughly) the center of the wall from a previous (very pell-mell, unplanned and unbalanced) grouping of art, so that’s where the church went. I figured I’d build out from there.

I made newspaper templates out of all of the other pieces I had and taped them up around the church. I just kept moving the templates around and swapping out one for another until I was satisfied with how the wall looked. Eventually I found a grouping I liked. Mostly.

What I didn’t like was the light switch. It drove me crazy. I couldn’t cover it because we use it all the time, but it felt like it was in the way no matter how I arranged things.

My husband, who is much braver about drilling holes into old plaster walls than I am, helped me hang everything when I finally had the arrangement figured out.

I was hoping once the art was up the light switch would just blend into the background. Unfortunately, I think the switch bothered me even more then. The whole grouping seemed unbalanced because of the switch.


So I put a frame around it. Up close, it looks a little weird.

But from a distance, the frame actually camouflages the switch…


… and the wall looks much more balanced. I have couple other ideas for camouflaging the switch that I’m going to play around with, but for now, I’m happy with it the way it is. (And my husband and son are happy not to be tripping over frames and newspapers and tools and hardware anymore.)

gallery wall

In addition to the art, I put an old shadow box (which I blogged about here) in the grouping.

gallery wall

The shadow box had been hanging above my desk in the master bedroom, but it fit perfectly below the capitol painting. And it’s one of my favorite things, so why not show it off out here instead of hiding it away in the bedroom, right?

art
I have one more piece to add to the wall yet, so stay tuned for a follow-up post.

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