Back in March, my husband and I bought our first home back in the suburbs were we grew up. It’s a 1953 ranch home with a ton of character (and creatures, we’ve come to find out haha but that’s for another day). One thing about this home is there is A TON of empty wall space. We quickly realized how little furniture we actually owned, when we really thought we had so much stuff for our new home! Boy, was I wrong!! I mean, I had so much empty wall space and floor space that we had to by rooms worth of stuff! Furniture is expensive when you basically are buying from scratch, we previously only had an 800 sqft apartment Downtown to now furnishing a whole house. (Insert my rolling there haha) I love finding deals though and we were fortunate enough to be moving into our home shortly after President’s Day, so we were able to take advantage of those sales for items we needed right away. We also waited to get bedroom furniture until closer to Memorial Day so we could take advantage of that sale! If you notice any trend here on my blog, it’s the fact that I LOVE SALES! So when it came to styling these empty walls we have, I’m slowly getting there and filling them up. But, again I always look for the sales to maximize my dollar! Pieces of my decor that will stay year round I will spend a little more money on, so I try to be cost conscious when buying pieces that will be changed out during different times of the year.
First part I’ll show you all is how I styled this large empty wall off to the corner of my dining area. I am definitely not done yet by any means though with this area! I feel like styling a home, whether it’s new to you or you have been living in it for years, it’s never ending. I have so many ideas that my brain just goes haywire because I want everything and could think of million ways to style it that I just walk out without anything sometimes! Have you ever felt like that? You’re just on a long walk through one of your favorite stores and you see so many fun things to decorate with that you just can’t decide on a handful of items, so you just leave…with nothing. Saddest situation, but I just need to walk away sometimes to sit down and figure out my game plan.
So a good plan is try and find at least one big piece that you want to base your idea around, and this sign from Hobby Lobby was mine. So, the adventure began to try and find something also of a larger size and then a handful of smaller items to put between them. I need things to be symmetrical and just can’t have them scattered all over the place. I have the worst OCD when something is out of place or the size looks off into comparison with other items around it. Keep in mind, I also don’t have kids yet and I’m sure that will change but for now I like things in order. It’s a great trait I got from my Dad (I’m being sarcastic here because it drives me crazy sometimes), but his Saturday mornings were spent cleaning the whole house starting at 7 or 8am while my mom was at work and if my siblings and I were asleep, well we weren’t much longer! The Oldies would be blaring on our record player or the radio that was attached to it and let me tell you, there was no sleeping through that. I do the same thing now! It’s Saturday, I woke up at 8 and went straight to cleaning my house and now I’m writing this post but listening to “A Star Is Born” soundtrack on my Mac. BTW, BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR! If you haven’t seen it do yourself a favor and go, but bring tissues! Anyways, outside of the trip down memory lane one or two larger items when decorating is always best to work around otherwise that’s what leads down a terrible bunny hole and takes you all over the place.
Here are the items I ended up buying for my gallery wall. I made sure they all match with my decor throughout the dining area and front room since it’s all one large open space. Most items I bought from Hobby Lobby and a few signs are from TJ Maxx. A few things items are ones that will be changed out during the different seasons to give the wall a new look but it won’t be as expensive. Remember, I mentioned earlier to spend more on items you’ll always have up or out in the house and add in pieces you can change out. So the maple leaf, the “in all things we give thanks” sign, the mason jar with cottonwood and feather will all probably get changed out for Christmas and I’ll add items to the larger flower to make it work with the new holiday decor. I think I rearranged some of the pieces 10 times before I decided how I liked them together. I then of course decided not to use the “gather” sign since it’s already written on the wood sign. I just felt like I couldn’t make it blend well and the husband said “take it out”, so I did and it sits above the fireplace in that same room.
Once I figured out how I liked the layout, I used painters tape to create the shapes and position it on the wall. It makes things a lot easier to visualize and it helps when your nailing in the screws. Again, just like when I had it laid out on the floor I did the same thing on the wall essentially to make sure I liked how it blended together and wasn’t too far away from the edges of the windows or the corner of the wall. You’ll notice everything is a little further over to the right of the wall because I planned for corner floating shelves since I think that will blend the best instead of just putting up standard or even floating wooden shelves on that left wall. Once you have the design together, let the nailing and hanging begin! It took me a couple hours and a few hard ciders from start to finish just because I couldn’t decide on how I wanted everything positioned. Not to mention then I decided half way through I would add floating shelves into the mix as soon as I found the right ones to go up (which I do plan to buy from Etsy and will update this post when I do). That in itself definitely added some time to this project for me since I had to shift the patterns of tape over. It all worked out in the end though and this is the final result! This is by far one of my favorite spaces to look at and enjoy in the house and it’s usually the first thing I see when coming out of my bedroom in the morning. We’ll be hosting our first Thanksgiving with possibly 30 family members and this space will have everyone gathered around it. I know my Father isn’t here to enjoy it with us, but I think he’d be proud of things I’ve done in our home that I’d usually ask him for help with. I am lucky enough to have a great Father-in-law to fill that void for me and be there if I need a handy-man or have questions on how something needs to be fixed or hung.
Your home should tell the story of who you are, and be a collection of what you love.
-Nate Berkus
*This was the tool I used to help me hang and make sure everything was level while I was putting together my gallery wall. It’s called the Hang It Perfect, and it was a random add that popped up on my Facebook page before we moved into our house. A total move my Father would do, is buy a “As You Seen On TV” item from Facebook non the less! Well touché Dad, I fell for it and it’s definitely the best thing I’ve bought! I’ve used it a ton since we’ve moved in and it was only $25. You can buy it through their site, Amazon or at Home Depot! (This is not an ad, I’m not getting paid for any of this)