Staircase Photo Gallery

When you put your house on the market, every realtor suggests that you remove all of your family photos and personal items so that potential buyers can envision themselves in the space, rather than looking at your things and your life.  No personality.  No warmth.

Well, we have lived in our new home for 3 months now and there are still no family pictures around.  We are ready to put our family and memories into our home again.  The problem has been where? how? A big reason for the delay is that our main living area/great room does not have much for wall space.  One wall is mostly window, one is the fireplace/media wall, one is the kitchen/dining area and one is the staircase wall.

The large wall going up the stairwell was the obvious choice.  I love the photo galleries I have seen in countless magazines, homes and blogs.  The gallery approach allows us to fill a space and create a statement by grouping a variety of our favorite photos in one space.  A great place for the eye to land.  The stairwell family photo wall is an obvious choice as it leads to the most private space of a home - the bedrooms.

The Process
I looked at alot of pictures of photo galleries and instantly pulled out all of the photos and frames we used in our old house and started to lay them out on the floor.  We sprinkled in a couple of sconces and other items to mix it up.  We have picked up alot of frames in various sizes from Costco so they are similar in color and style.

I was so excited and scared - that was alot of photos, alot of holes in the wall, what if we don't like it once it is up.  This could go very wrong.  So, I grabbed a stack of newspaper out of the recycle bin and started to cut out pieces of paper the size of each of the frames.  I then taped them up on the wall.  I played with it a bit more and figured, we would live with it for a while and see what we think.  Well, my husband didn't like it, he thought it was too busy.  I think I kind of agreed with him but didn't want to be wrong - don't you just hate when the man of the house is right!  hee hee!  So I pulled out all of the smaller frames, the extras and did some rearranging. I like it so much better.

** Before you judge my photo taking and design capabilities - the photo was taken by my 4yr old son - I forgot to take them before I started hanging pictures.  The boy also added his own "flare" to the newspaper pattern by re-taping some of the cut-outs that I had removed after the first attempt at placement - hence the mish-mash of paper along the bottom. **

Focusing on the larger frames and using a less is more approach was much better.  Not quite as scared to put those holes in the wall. 

After living with the newspaper for a few days, I decided to go for it and hung the pictures today.  I love it!  so nice to see the smiling faces of my kids.

Now I just need a new family photo for the frame on the top left and a picture of my husband and I for the frame with the blue scrapbook paper in it.  So excited to have another wall finished.