The Wall is Finished! (for now)

    A while back, I hinted at a project that I was working on in our living room: we had a huge empty wall in our living room/dining room that needed some love. So, after living in this apartment for over a year and growing weary of staring at the giant empty canvas of wall, I decided to hang a collection of our photographs and art on it!

Our Ikea Bounty

    When we went to Ikea, we picked up a few frames and a picture ledge to use on the wall. We weren't sure exactly what we were going to do yet, so we got a small assortment of things: two Verserum frames ($1.99), three Ribba shadow-box frames ($9.99 each), and a Ribba picture ledge ($9.99). These were supplemented with several frames and a mirror that we already had. We used the shadow-boxes to display some artsy CD covers and the frames to showcase some photographs of our travels and our wedding.

    I began the task of hanging everything by laying it all out on the floor of the living room in order to gauge how it would all look. After hours of deliberation, I decided to line everything up on the wall along an invisible bottom line in order to give the decorating a nice clean look. After measuring the space I had to work with on the wall and the sizes of the frames, I had a rough plan for how I would hang everything.

I taped the bottom edge to make sure everything lined up.

    Next, I put masking tape along the wall where the bottom line would be and marked where the edges of each frame would be. Then I hung the frames, starting along the tape line and working my way up the wall. In this way, the pictures remain evenly spaced and have a nice clean bottom edge to them.
    The actual hanging only took about forty minutes, which I thought was not bad. After everything had been hung and leveled, I carefully removed the tape. I still have a few more things I would like to hang: two small picture frames above the octagonal mirror, another frame above the picture ledge, and an artsy concert poster above the shadow box on the right side. All in all though, I am quite satisfied!

I worked left to right, as there is a built in shelf on the right.

The finished product! (for now)