One of the priorities I’ve had since we moved into the ‘new house’ (it’s been nearly 3 years, but it still feels new to us) has been to get some meaningful photographs up on the walls. And by photos, I mean big, space-filling photos – not little 8x10s.
I have this series of 11x14s hanging in my kitchen – just everyday photos of my daughter, my husband, and myself in black and white and framed with a thick black frame.
In my living room, I have a series of prints on standout from our trip to Italy in 2000. These photos may seem small in perspective, but they are actually 20x20 each. My goal is to add 6 or 9 more photos from Italy to this wall and go for a really powerful grouping. I have the photos chosen, but am doing them in groups of 3 until I finish. I’m thinking another group of 3 will be added this summer. With the standout mount at this size, these are a bit of an indulgence/investment.
In my dining room, I have started a “Places We’ve Been” wall featuring our favorite photos from our various trips. These are all 10x10 sized (I regret not going 12x12, for the record) and are mounted on a sturdy styrene backing, which allows me to easily place them on the wall with the use of some velcro hanging tabs. No hammers, no nails, minimal frustration. The best part is, it’s easy to rearrange them. Actually, I’m thinking once I have a few more photos added, I might squeeze them together a little more and get another column in there.
Here’s another angle, which shows the photos themselves a little more clearly.
Sonoma, San Francisco, Aruba, Barbados, and Florence are all represented. New Orleans, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Vallarta, Grand Cayman, and Las Vegas have yet to be represented. My hope is to fill this wall as much as possible!
This next set is a little more difficult to show properly. It’s the staircase heading down to the basement. It’s a big wall to fill, and I used a series of 3 20x20s and 3 20x24s to fill it up.
I was a little nervous to undertake this last one – the mathematics of measuring all of these photos out in relation not only to the walls, but also to the stairs themselves… well, it freaked me out a little bit. I told myself that it didn’t have to be perfect, but it did have to look good (in that I couldn’t visibly notice any discrepancy). As luck would have it, the picture-hanging gods were on my side that day. The fuss and the math were about as easy as I could have hoped for, and I had these photos up and on display in no time. Like the photos in the dining room, these two are on a styrene or masonite backing, allowing me to hang them directly on the wall with velcro tabs. Swapping them out and rearranging them should be a piece of cake if I decide to take that on.
This next set was actually the first set I hung in the house. I wanted something big and attention grabbing for the entryway, and I searched through my photo archives for just the right pictures. At the time these were my favorites – if I were to redo things, I might swap out for something different. I do like the grouping, though, and they provide just the right scale for this entryway. Once I can get a console table added below the photos, I think this area will be complete.
