Stair Gallery

(Note: I've updated some of the photos since painting the woodwork)

Here’s a mini project my husband and I finished up a week or two ago. We had a ton of frames we’d received as wedding gifts gathering dust in a downstairs closet. We’d just never gotten around to finding pictures or hanging them. I’ve always loved stairwell photo galleries, and we had a great (very blank!) one to fill up. Sadly, I don’t have a “before” picture- I always remember that I should be photographing my projects either right in the middle of them, or when they’re already done.

Here’s what you need:

• A bunch of frames (I stuck with silver and black frames with white mats. You don’t have to do this, but it looks more cohesive I think. For more photo gallery tips and advise, see my earlier posting). Keep in  mind you can spray paint frames if need be. I did, can you tell which one? Didn’t think so :)
• Big pieces of paper (or lots of smaller pieces taped together like I used. Newspaper would work well.), tape, and scissors
• Hammer and nails
• A level (if you’re picky)

It can be hard to envision where exactly each frame should go on the wall, especially since the frames are traveling up the wall along with the stairs. There’s no scientific method to figuring this out- I just cut out pieces of paper that were the same size as all of my frames and arranged them on the wall using tape to see which layout was best. Have a look:

It took a couple of attempts to get it right. I started with the biggest frame, put it in the middle of the layout, and then worked around it. The great thing about using paper cut outs is that there are no pesky nail holes to cover up if you switch your mind about where a photo should go. Also, I tried to keep a lot of the frames around eye level as you walk up the stairs- just something helpful to know. My handy husband put up all the frames, leveled them, and made sure that the spacing between pictures was at 3 inches :) Here’s the end result again:

I’m SO happy with the way it turned out- it really fills up the space!