Gallery Picture Wall

I painted and painted and painted anything and everything. It really is the best and cheapest facelift you can make to a room. It is funny because when you get something newly painted in a room, everything else around it looks so dull and old, you just naturally have to go around adding paint to everything else.  I painted all the walls a light chocolate color. We really liked Home Depot Glidden paint the best. It seems to cover better and it is not quite as much as the Behr paint and primer they hawk that costs $10 bucks more a gallon. Glidden is the best for us. 


I love how the black looks on the new travertine floors...




Previously, this wall (below) was covered with a 4 foot long, decorative plate shelf. It really needed a facelift, and I knew I wanted some kind of family Gallery Picture Wall. I found what I was looking for at Rodworks down in Draper. Link HERE I brought the plate rack up to my craft room where I am presently painting it white to go up there to hold some little pastel buckets for all my craft junk.  (another post later on...)



Here's a pic I found of the plate rack in the background...barely showing...here's all my boys...being cute...
Oh! You can also see the color the chairs used to be....light oak...look to the left...that's the best I can do on before pics.

 Anyway, Rodworks has lots of great ideas and will help you figure out what you need to decorate any large or long wall in your house. I bought this cool wrought iron decorative rod there and I bought the 2 black wrought iron "cones" to use as seasonal flower holders. I change them up from Christmas greenery and holly berries and jingle bells at Christmas to pink and yellow and pink beaded greenery at Easter to orange and brown and green fall leaf sprays and pine cones at Thanksgiving. You can see the sugared hearts I have in there for Valentines now. It is fun to change the ribbon colors occasionally too. They are only up there as decoration. They are just stuck to the back of the frames with double stick tape.  The medallions in black wrought iron on the left and right at the bottom (covered with a ribbon) are also from Rodworks. All of the wrought iron probably cost me about $40.00. I think I had some coupons too.

Gallery Picture Wall: My kids remark that it's all about the grandkids now....I think they are right!

The time consuming thing was actually finding and getting sepia copies made of all these pictures in the Gallery Picture Wall and finding frames that were similar but not all the same. I wanted some variety but all white matting and black frames. Some of these I repainted from other colored frames I had around the house. Some I bought new from Michaels, Roberts or Kohls. Kohls is really great for sales on pictures of all kinds and decorative frames. Plus I'm in like their gold star customer club or something since I used to work there when I was getting my master's degree (had to pay all that tuition) so I always get coupons. Gotta love coupons.

 My daughter had lots of cute pictures of my granddaughters who naturally are the stars of the picture wall. She deserves a high 5 for helping me with this. She had done a picture wall at her house with all 8 x 10s and sepia prints and it is beautiful. Her wall gave me the inspiration for mine.



Here are the metal cones at Christmastime...in the Gallery Picture Wall
I change them up for each season with just a little tweak



My family Gallery Picture Wall...this is fun to change up seasonally...


The next thing we decided on was travertine floors. They are hard and cold in the mornings and anything you drop on them is instantly going to shatter, (trust me on that, and I mean SHATTER!!) but I still love them. I love floors that hide dirt and travertine is the master at that, with all the natural blotchiness it comes in. They match any decor and they look very beautiful even when they haven't been washed in weeks. When I do vacuum and clean and polish the travertine floors  they just shine like brand new. The travertine floor tiles were one thing we both completely agreed upon. We were both willing to spend the extra money on travertine too. We bought it at Home Depot and had it professionally installed.  I think it will be a good resale value item that won't go out of style. Maybe the knotty birch cabinet may looked dated in a few years, but not the granite nor the travertine floor tile.

Travertine flooring....natural stone hides a lot of stuff!

The backsplash we chose was also tumbled travertine and John did this himself. We chose a bit of decorative tiles to insert halfway down the backsplash. We still have not grouted it yet, but that will wait till we have a new burst energy, probably in the spring when things warm up a bit. (or maybe never again will we get burst of energy....I don't know... :)


One other thing Mr. Moss and I did together was building some cornices over the window above the sink and one over the sliding glass door leading to the outdoor deck. That will be in the next post....
How do you like it so far?