Thrifty Thursday: How to Hang Pictures and See What they Look Like Before Putting Holes in the Wall

I have had this project on my list for at least four years to finally get some pictures up of my son but it is always moved to the back burner.  I started a little bit of a "when my son goes back to school list" to get things done and this was one of the things on it.  Do you ever have those lists??  The ones where things are always added and nothing goes away?

My cousin came home with some frames for herself and they were exactly what I was looking for so I started looking at her frames and trying to figure out how they would work with the pictures that I had.  She was so ready to help me with this project so we spent a long time talking and pointing and rearranging frames.  I decided to go upstairs and get the pictures out of my sleeping son's room in order to figure out what we had to work with.  We moved the pictures and the frames around on the floor to come up with how the pictures would go in the overall scheme and how many frames I would need.  I came up with one plan which needed at least four more frames.  Then, I moved it around to include a different frame that I already had.  With the help of my cousin, we cleaned the glass and attached photos in the frames (okay, I didn't clean them my cousin did- Thanks Lynn).  She took a picture of the layout on the floor so we wouldn't forget and we went to bed.

I woke up in the morning and realized that I forgot the thing that I really wanted to frame which was the silhouette that my son's preschool director made of him.  I went downstairs first thing in the morning and changed the entire layout!!  My cousin said she wasn't helping with this project if I just kept changing things...she was joking but I think that I finally had the final layout so she took the list of the picture frames that I needed and headed back to the store.

We finally had the pictures (mostly), the frames and we were ready to go!  Now the big problem, how do we get this up on the wall?  My cousin consulted a few ideas on pinterest and we combined all of them.  She took the inside papers of all of the frames and stuck them up on the wall with painters tape.  The white papers were the frames that we already had that we didn't just get at IKEA.  This really helps you see the frames and see if the layout fits the area you have before you make any holes in the wall.  My original idea had three rows so it is a good idea that I didn't stick with that because the wall would have been totally full ceiling to couch.

We also measured on the wall so that we knew where the ends of the couch were and where the middle was.  We also measured up to 16 inches so that we would know where we wanted the bottom of the pictures.  There was tape all over the wall.  Do you see all the green spots on the wall?  More tape went one while we were working to mark other areas.

Then we decided where to start and my husband started hanging pictures.  We started in the middle and worked our way out.  There were some problems because it wasn't just nailing at the edge of the frame so we had to do some measurements to where the nail needed to be from the picture hanging wire on the back of the bigger frames.  You would think that would be the end of it but there were many adjustments made along the way with the help of my husband, cousin and uncle, we used our math skills and didn't have to make a lot of extra holes in the wall.

We finally got them all up.  The only ones that were a little hard to figure were the black frames but after we put the nail in the wall, I tightened the wire that was hanging the picture to adjust it so that all of the picture bottoms were in a line. 

I still have to put pictures in one of the black frames but I was super excited to get up 5 years of my son's pictures including his first birthday and all three years of preschool photos.  I got to put up the family pictures of us at the Cherry Blossom Festival.  I know that I will change out this photos eventually but it makes me smile every time I look at the wall with the pictures up there.  The format is already set so changing the photos will be no problem!

These frames were some that I had and a few that I bought at IKEA and I got this project done in under $50 with free photo prints from Walgreens, a picture from my son's school and some great pictures that my cousin got done of my son when he was younger.  I am super excited to have this project done and I can't wait to get to the next one on the list!!  Make your own photo wall to make you smile.

Do you have any projects that you are putting off for a later date?  Get a friend (or a cousin, a husband and an uncle) and help you get it done!