Wall O' Frames

I'm packing heat pictures.  Sorry, feeling a little gangsta this morning.  What I mean to say is, I got frames, yo. :p

I have been oohing and aahing over gallery walls for as long as I can remember, as documented here and on my "Make a House a Home" pinboard on Pinterest.  I had one in my front hall when I lived alone in my basement apartment, but haven't really delved into them any further.  Last weekend though, I got inspired and decided it was time to do something with the barren wall in our living room.

We have ten foot ceilings in that room so it's a lot of wall to cover.  I didn't want to go with a conventional gallery wall with frames everywhere, so instead opted for picture ledges.  We picked up four of the ribba picture ledges from IKEA and whole whack of frames and got to work.  We butted two up together to create one long ledge because that wall is not only tall, it's wide too.

We started off by finding the studs in our wall with a stud finder.  The ribba ledges are supposed to hold about 17 lbs (using their pre-drilled holes), but we wanted to make sure nothing would come crashing down on our heads while we were sitting on the couch.  That's why we went down the drilling into studs road.  We pre-drilled our holes into the ledges just to make sure they wouldn't split while we were putting them up.  *Hint: when you're measuring your studs and marking on to your ledges, make sure you don't use the same measurements for all four.  Not that we did that or anything*  Cue angry boyfriend stomping to the balcony for the third time to re-drill our stud holes.  Whoops....


This picture makes the ledge look a little tilty, but I promise it's straight and sturdy

To mount them, we used a laser level, courtesy of the B's dad's tool collection to make sure the ledges were straight.  How do I love that thing...let me count the ways.  It was awesome!!  It was this one from Home Hardware and it worked like a charm.  It has a wall mount so you don't have to stand there and hold the laser level.  So we got one "shelf" up and started on the other.


Two shelves down....time to decorate that shiz

In total there are 31 frames on those ledges.  I already owned about ten of these, but the rest were purchased from IKEA for around $150 total, which isn't too bad considering how many frames we bought.  We packed em on, but I really like the layered effect and think everything goes really well together.  Most of the pictures in the frames are from the boy's European vacation, pictures of friends and some random "art" type stuff that I found on the internet.  We used some velcro peel and stick on the back of the large frames, just to make sure it was extra secure.  We decided to add those after the right top side fell over shortly after putting them up.  But now everything is safe and secure and I feel confident sitting under them.


The finished product *swoon*

There are still some tweaks that I would like to make and I'm sure this gallery wall will continuously evolve and change with us but I am absolutely enamoured with it.  It's way better than looking at a huge blank wall and sometimes I just sit on the other side of the room and gaze lovingly.  But I'm weird like that.

So what do you think?  Do you like gallery walls using the frame ledges?  Or would you prefer a big whackload of frames?  Do tell.

Tata for now.
xoxo.