I think most kids are familiar with the concept of musical chairs. There’s a ring of chairs, with one more kid than there are chairs. When the music starts, everyone walks around in a circle. When the music stops, everyone tries to sit in a chair, resulting in one kid being left standing. That child is out and the music starts again until there is just one kid left. That child wins!
Well, that’s what I did with…um…pretty much all the art in our house over the weekend.
After flip flopping the living room and dining room, I was left with the gallery wall I’d painstakingly built hidden behind the big shelving unit with the globes on top. And while partially hidden art can be a good look, this definitely wasn’t.
So down came the wall.
And when the music stopped, we had a few losers (some vintage fairy tale prints and an Edward Hopper poster), which I have now listed on Craigslist. Couldn’t hurt, right?
As for where all the rest of it ended up, well, some of it is in the hall.
Some of it is in the bedroom.
Some of it ended up on the other side of the dining table.
But most of it ended up incorporated into a new gallery wall!
If you’ve been reading for a while, you might think my favorite thing to do is hang pictures. I swear that’s not the case. But I’m not going to say this is “done” because it seems like every time I say that, I end up changing something, like, less than a week later. Whoops.
Of course when I decided to move all the art, first I went to Pinterest for inspiration. Last time I did the gallery wall, I had the starburst clock as a jumping off point. It was a nice central element to work with. This time though, I had an elephant in the living room. Well, not an actual elephant, though for someone whose favorite animal is foxes, I do have an awful lot of elephants.
No, I’m referring here to the huge satellite photo of San Francisco that used to bisect the dining table. And since it’s actually nailed to the wall, I decided that it was either leave it be or take it down permanently and I’m not ready to part with it yet.
Plus, the TV creates its own focal point, which I kind of want to diminish when it’s not on. Not to mention that the thermostat and an ugly register cover are also both on that adjacent wall. Finally, family photos hang in another gallery wall in the hallway that you can see from the front door. And as we have previously discussed, I am no minimalist.
As for how to hang a pictures, there are lots of tutorials online, none of which I follow. My method is to measure the distance between the “hanging point” on the back of the frame and the top of the frame, then put pencil marks on the wall where I want my nail. It works great for me without all the hassle of laying everything out on the floor or cutting up little newspaper templates. Too much trouble.
Tune in next week, when I will have inevitably acquired another piece of art and moved everything again.
That’s a joke.
I hope.
This is a post from Pies and Puggles. Republishing this article in full or in part is a violation of copyright law. And it isn’t nice. © 2010-2013, all rights reserved.