Our Gallery Wall

It only took us a year and half. We had most of these frames when we moved a year and half ago. I felt that we needed a few more frames and bought those soon after we moved (for the most part, they're still empty, too). All I did was stack them in the living room and leave them - for months. Occasionally, the pile of frames would move around the living room to a new inconspicuous spot. Eventually, several months ago, I even filled most of the frames with photos, but when I was done, I just stacked them up again. My original intention was to hang them all on the wall leading up the stairs, so I've been stalling for a while. My husband decided to clean up our living room today and wanted to finally get those stacks of frames off the floor. I suggested our living room wall (I figured that would be easier than the stairs). He went along with it and I LOVE how it turned out! Now, I really want to work on decorating the rest of our living room - and finish filling that wall with frames!

Here's how we did it. First, I laid everything out on the floor how I liked it. I came up with this arrangement (ignore the mirror - it's going somewhere else).

My husband measured where he would need to start and where the bottom would end up while I started cutting out paper 'copies' of all our frames. We realized we'd need a new arrangement, so while he did the top row, I rearranged the floor to something like this:
We liked it and stuck it on the wall. We originally had the top row of frames level and decided that looked funny, so we did some rearranging on the floor and then copied that with our papers to make sure it looked good on the wall. Here's the finished result:
When I made all the paper copies, I wrote what was in the frames on the paper and marked where the nail would need to go for hanging that frame. Here's my hubby filling the dots with nails.
Then we started replacing the papers with the frames.

And here's the finished result:
I really like how it turned out. Now, I want to rearrange some furniture, get a sectional and finish filling the wall with frames. We decided that we'll finish filling the frames and update the photos (they were taken just before our move) at the same time - soon after this little girl comes. I can't believe we put this off for so long. I'm glad my husband was insistent today. I smile each time I go into the living room now.