Spring is around the corner, and this April we celebrate two years of home ownership. For the last year, N and I have been hard at work making our house even more of a home, checking things off our house to-do list. I shared part of the list in a previous post, but then I neglected to keep blogging about it! :) Most of our work was purely decorative as our house was new and in pretty good shape when we purchased it. One big to-do was getting our gallery wall up. Yes, the ubiquitous gallery wall that nearly every newlywed before me has posted about, including some of our own EAD Living bloggers: Kate, Cyd, Mojito Maven, and Erin. I couldn’t resist it – a mass of family photos was be perfect for the large, empty wall in our dining room.

{images via: 1. Domino. 2: Domino. 3: Elle Decor design by Steven Gambrel. 4: Coburn Architecture}

I set to work studying inspiration photos to figure out my plan. Did I want white frames with color photos? Or would I rather have a color frame with black and white photos? Should the frames all be the same size? Neatly organized or haphazardly placed? The options seemed endless, but after all that “studying” I settled on matching, black frames with color photos as neatly organized as I could get them. Black frames would tie into the chairs and I am way too grid-oriented to do something unstructured. A slim frame similar to those in #3 and 4 above would keep the look modern and sleek. After some quick online browsing, I found similar style frames at West Elm and Pottery Barn. However, I didn’t love the price, so I kept searching.

Eventually I discovered Aaron Brothers’ signature frame. Armed with my inspiration, I mocked up a layout using Adobe InDesign, a program I use daily for my design work. This was the most important step for me. I am pretty visual so seeing the frames roughly laid out helped me to really decide and have a plan before I just started putting frames up there. I know a lot of designers suggest arranging the layouts on the floor, but I wanted to see them as in place as I could without nailing a hole in the wall or using paper templates. Laying everything out digitally really helped. I also placed some possible photo choices to make it even easier to visualize. You could use Photoshop or even just plain graph paper to mock-up your layout. After some finagling, I came up with two layouts I liked.

Then I waited patiently for the semi-annual Aaron Brothers Penny Sale and bought enough frames for both layouts – all for a song. I cut out templates of the frames using tracing paper I had on hand. (This is helpful because the frames are not exactly the size they say. For example, the measurement 8×10″ refers to the opening of the frame, so the frame itself is approximately 8.25″x10.25″.) Then N and I hung the tracing paper for both layouts to see which we liked better.

{image via author’s personal collection}

Very quickly, we decided on the first layout with more frames. It just filled the large wall better. With the tracing paper still up, he set about to hang the frames. He started in the middle and worked his way out using the tracing paper as a guide and carefully measuring the distance between frames. I decided to let him tackle that project solo for sanity’s sake. ;) He had it all up in one evening, and it took me about six months to fill all of the frames with photos.

{image via author’s personal collection}

And it is done! Pardon the poor quality photo, but I wanted to save the full view for a future post on our living and dining room. I am so pleased with the way the wall turned out. It is so wonderful to have more photos of us on trips and with our family on display. I have had lots of compliments on the wall and one friend was so inspired she borrowed the idea and created a similar wall in her home. Our house is finally starting to feel like home! What touches do you think make a house a home? For me, personal photos are a huge component. Do you have a gallery wall with family photos?