the gallery wall grows…

(if you haven’t already seen this on Apartment Therapy)

This was my gallery wall for months- I liked the layout and look of it, but it only occupied half of that weird wall.

Finally I got my ass to IKEA with the art I still needed to frame and was actually able to buy frames for all but one piece.  My husband was NOT enthusiastic that this project was back because last time getting the holes exactly right for my anal design was a nightmare.  This time I made paper replicas of the art to hang, taping it onto the walls with the location of the hangers marked on the the paper so I could just mark the wall once the paper was perfect.  My husband was much happier to be able to drill all the holes in one 10 minute push so he could then return to college football.

See the wall is strange because it is both living room and walkway into the dining room.  It is hard to explain without better pictures of the room (I swear those will come some day) but the room is big- that window is the span of two of those end tables and a loveseat and then the wall continues maybe another 5ft (the TV is in that corner).  The living room has a couch, a loveseat, two armchairs, two coffee tables, a 54” TV, a DVD cabinet, and five end tables, and we still have lots of space to walk.  Here is a not great picture of that portion of the room taken the last weekend when I rearranged the furniture.

Big room and yet only half of the art wall overlaps with the main seating area portion of the space; there are another two armchairs and another table in the walkway portion of the space.  I swear it works better than it sounds.  And please note that I own very little of this furniture- just the TV stand, the wooden cabinet, the two coffee tables and the chests.  Plus the rugs- those I do own.  The rest of the furniture, all bazillion chairs, comes with the house/job.

Here is the final art wall.  I like it because it fills the space and allows me to display a lot of the art I’ve collected over the years.  I wish I could let it be more random but I just don’t have it in me; more formless arrangements make me twitchy in my own house though I often admire them in the spaces of others.

Brad isn’t thrilled that after a year in the house (6 months with this furniture), I still see this as a work in progress.  He would like the house to be done and left alone, but I am a self-confessed tinkerer so that just isn’t going to happen.  Despite that, I think he agrees this new arrangement feels more spacious, and I know he is happy to get that pile of art off the chest and onto the wall.  Now I need to get a little stand or something built to elevate that small carved wood chest on the left to raise it up closer to the height of the larger chest on the right.  Great, another project…