Apartment: Gallery Wall and Living Spaces

The apartment has a LONG hall from the front door to the living space at the other end of the building. My parents have a ton of pictures from pictures of family to pictures my brother drew. Bet you didn’t know that – my younger brother is the family artist. He paints/draws/tattoos. Did I shock you with the tattoo part? You should see the art the kid has done on himself – amazing. Anyway, back to the hall. I thought it would be fun to hang most of Mom’s pictures in one spot since I love gallery walls and the hallway was just asking for groupings of pictures to make that long trek down the hall interesting. We made two large groupings since I felt that if we covered all of the walls it would be too much and this lets you stand back and look at the pictures without feeling like you might brush up against frames on the opposite wall. I hope that explanation makes sense!

Here’s part of the long hall before:

And here is it now that we painted the walls a creamy beige, swapped out the brown outlets for white ones, painted the baseboards white and added the galleries of pictures:

Normally I would lay out the design on the floor and then use pieces of paper cut to size to properly hang the art on the walls (see here, here and here). However, this time we just put all of the pictures on the floor, started with a couple of big ones on each wall and then started filling in the space around the pictures with smaller pictures/art and some fun items like a license plate from WV, some metal leaves and block letters.  Do you spot a young Heather as a bluebird?

  We had two old pictures of our old home – one was a painting and another was an original picture from 1912 (1916? I forget). Mom had those hanging before I got there on a small wall between the storage room and the wall of closets.

The living room and dining room were done when I got into town – yea! Mom bought a new light fixture from a local store and had them turn it into a hanging fixture for over the dining room table and her friends helped move the furniture into the room.  Here is the blank slate of a before…

  …and now. The first picture is what you see when you walk into the room from the hallway.  We still haven’t figured out where to put the folding screen of pictures (seen next to the couch in the pic below) so for now it is just resting against the wall. I’m a HUGE fan of long curtains but you just can’t do them in this apartment since under almost every window is a baseboard heater and those suckers get hot.

  

The living room did get one change after I took the daytime pictures- we moved out the large recliner and replaced it with the small antique rocker that Mom had in the front room. The recliner is being put up for sale since it was just too large for the space.  This picture was taken during our New Years Eve game night so ignore the mess!

The Master bedroom got a fresh coat of paint in October and a new wall treatment in December. Yes – Mom and I finally tackled a project that I’ve been eager to try…we starched fabric to a wall! Steps and pictures to come!  Here was the room back in October…

…and here it is now. The bed looks HUGE in this picture and the Queen sized bed is a little large for the room but it isn’t as massive as this picture makes it seem. Mom isn’t 100% happy with the pictures on the wall so I’m sure she’ll modify them again while I’m gone. She said she just hung some up and wasn’t thrilled with the result but we didn’t get a chance to redo it while I was home.

  All I helped do to this room in December was to hang that awesome fabric.  The Guest bedroom also got a makeover. Mom painted the room, ordered a new bed and moved furniture into the room before I got there. I helped hang pictures – that’s it. I love when things are already done for me. ;) Oh, and I showed her a trick to make the window seem larger than it is by hanging the curtains wider than the window frame. It works like a charm every time.  Here was the before…

…and the after.

Mom still has some decorating to do in here and I’d love to revamp that laundry basket the next time I’m home.

So that’s it – I worked in the evenings for one week and during the days another week but we got a LOT done in that time. I’m so happy to help Mom get things done since she said the house feels like her home now…and that really is all that matters.

*In case you missed the initial posts about the apartment you can find them here and here. *

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