Homemaking 101 | Photo Wall Makeover

I've had a photo wall in both our apartment, and in our new country home. I like having  photos of family and friends hanging in our house, especially now that Little Man is here. I will take him over to the wall and point out different people he has met and say things like, "there is grandmommy" or "there is Aunt Mal". Right now he might be still a little young to recognize their photos, but he will eventually catch on.

When I did our Master Bed & Bath Makeover I took most of the wedding photos I had hanging on our photo wall and moved them into our bedroom. I wish I had thought to take a photo of the wall with it's blank spots where the wedding photos used to hang. It was quite hideous and stayed that way for about a month. Finally, just before Easter I decided I needed to pull the wall together before all the family came out for the holiday. I had the new photos already printed off and I had made several trips to Goodwill to find different frames so I just needed to match everything up and get it hung.

There is awful lighting in our hallway so I couldn't get a good photo of the wall unless I had the camera flash off.

This makeover process took me several days. I didn't expect that at first, but once I got through the first three steps I realized the mismatched frames looked awful on the wall and needed paint  (I think I originally planned to paint them, but had forgotten about that). Once the paint was added I had a nice-looking black & gold frame theme and I think it looks fantastic!

Here are a few photos of the makeover process:

I was in the middle of several projects the week before Easter.

First I gathered all the frames and photos. I matched the photo with a frame, got the glass cleaned and put the photo in it.

As I matched up a photo with it's frame I would lay it out on the living room floor.

I ended up rearranging the pattern three times by the time I got all the frames filled.

Here is the last version of how I had the photos arranged for the wall. Even then I had to do a little rearranging once I started hanging the photos because they didn't match up the same as they did on the ground.

I got all the photos up on the wall and decided that, yes, paint was a necessity! All the different color frames looked terrible together.

I pulled down the frames I wanted to paint, removed their photos & glass and went to the front porch to get them painted.

Notice the lamp from my Fail | Painted Lamp post? I worked on it this day too.

Once I got a frame painted I put it out on the large sheet of plastic so it could dry. By the time I got done with the last frame the first one was dry enough for it's second coat. This process took quite a bit of time and was messy, but the finished product was well worth the work.

I'm quite pleased with how well the finished wall turned out. I have more photos to add to the left side, but no frames to put them in. I guess it will be back to Goodwill for me! This project is similar to my Add A Little Paint project from last year.