Bella Galleria

Even though most of our house looks like an exploded construction site, I can't help but forget about the buckets of paint and the drywall dust everywhere and simply go a-decorating! Sometimes, the decoration is triggered by a need for a solution to an ongoing ....hm, problem.

See, there's our stair case. It's now bright and open and one of the main traffic arteries of our house. Despite the fact that there is a handrail, a certain member of our family likes to use the wall on the right for additional support leaving hand prints in his wake. "Hands off the walls!" is a shout that rings through the Duckling on a fairly regular basis, yet, to no avail.

[Before: Bright airy but empty staircase]

A barrier was needed ... and quick! I gathered all the decorative frames and plaques I could find, grabbed my trusted spraypaint and went to work!

[Letters and ceramic plaque got a new coat of paint]

[Pile of frames and art and more!]

Gallery walls have been all the rage in the blog world but frankly aside from a more contemporary styling, picture walls have always been a staple in the decoration of a family's home.

[Testing the layout]

There are plenty of posts out there all giving you plenty of detail on how others planned and laid out their gallery wall. I simply played with the frames and other objects I had, nudging them around and re-arranging them on the floor until I had an arrangement that looked like it'd work well on our staircase's wall.
And rather than cutting pieces of newspaper or cardboard to size and placing them on the wall first, I eyeballed where the center of my layout should go, grabbed the frame in the center of the layout and pounded in a nail. From there, I used the center frame as orientation point for the following pieces, and about half an hour later our staircase looked like this:

[After: A whole wall of pretty pictures!]

Loooooove!

Only regret: I started a little high(er) than I feel I should have. I usually tend to hang frames a little on the low side, so I aimed a little higher this time. What we'll need is simply more pieces of art and pictures to extend the gallery wall to the lower half of the wall. And even though the frames do not cover the target zone for hand prints, they do their job in deterring pawing the wall on the way up. Gallery wall for the win!

[Peering up the stairs]

Yep, we're definitely off to a good start here