Finally - A Gallery Wall For Our Stairway

As soon as I finished painting this hallway a year a half ago (which was pretty much one of my least favorite painting jobs in this whole house because it involved all those annoying spindles and me balancing on a ladder on top of scaffolding!) I knew I wanted to do a gallery wall going up the stairs. However, gallery walls on stairways always seemed a little daunting to me plus I couldn't decide on what look I wanted to go with - a mix of different style frames, all black frames, all white frames, a mix of sizes or all the same size...you get the idea, so I kept putting it off.

I finally decided I just needed to pull the trigger though and do SOMETHING because even though we have photos sprinkled throughout the house I missed having some of my favorite memories out where we could see them every day. My parent's had a gallery wall going up their staircase filled with all sorts of family photos in their last house and my grandmother had photos all over the walls in one of her rooms and I always loved being able to look at all the photographs and see so many different memories every time I climbed the stairs.

Because we went with a mix of frames in the den/study for the gallery wall we did in there, I ended up deciding to keep this more simple.  Plus you can see this wall from the front door, the dining room, the upstairs and downstairs hallway, the upstairs bathroom and two bedrooms so it seemed to make the most sense to keep the frames as simple as possible so it flowed nicely with all of the rooms you could see it from. To keep the cost down I went with the Ribba frames from IKEA. All in all I was pretty happy with them. My only real complaint would be that the large 20" by 20" frames are more like shadow boxes and stick out further than the rest of them and that kind of drives me a little crazy but that's probably just because I have a little OCD.

Because I had no idea how many frames I would need to order and what sizes I used the back of some old wrapping paper I had had for years and never really liked and cut out a million different pieces of the different sizes the Ribba frames came in and started playing around with how to place them. As you can see I wasn't very precise in how I cut them - I was just trying to get a general idea. Ultimately, I am so glad I did this but I am not going to lie, it was pretty time consuming and kind of a pain in the neck. It definitely saved me the trouble of ordering too many or not enough frames though and helped when it came time to hang the real frames by just kind of hammering through the paper in the spot I wanted the nails and then ripping the paper down and hanging up the real frame. So, although it was annoying it was definitely worth it and I would do it again.

Once that was done I wrote down all the size photos I would need and then used some that I already had in the correct size and then ordered the rest of the prints in the right sizes. 

This angle looks the worst in photos - it actually doesn't look as crooked in real life - ha! I mean it's definitely NOT perfect, but it looks really crooked in these pictures because of the lens I had to use for this angle. It warps angles a bit which is especially frustrating when trying to photograph something like this - ha!

And as you can see in that last picture we have a new sign! It will be available in our shop later this month!

SOURCE LIST:
Wall Color - Moonshine in Matte Finish (BM)
Trim Color - Simply White in Semi-gloss Finish (BM)
Door Color - Mopboard Black in Semi-gloss Finish (BM)
Light Fixture - Small Sized Mia Pendant from Pottery Barn
Beadboard Wallpaper - Allen and Roth from Lowe's
Sign - Dear Lillie
Baskets - HomeGoods
Vase filled with Branches from the Yard - HomeGoods
Runner - RugsUSA (can't remember what pattern it was, but when I get a chance will try to look it up and add it in later)
Little Mirror - Antique Farmhouse
Frames - Ribba from Ikea in an array of sizes

I hope you all have a fabulous rest of the week!