First things first: weren’t we suggesting that foxes might be the next big “it” animal, nudging birds and giraffes out of the spotlight? This video felt like confirmation of that idea, so I had to mention it before moving on.
Now, back to the matter at hand.
Sherry and I have long liked the idea of surrounding a TV with framed art to soften that big black rectangle on the wall. We have a fairly large stash of frames to choose from—128, to be exact—so selecting the right pieces was not a speedy process. After more deliberation than I care to admit, we finally hung the first frame collage in this house.
We began with a bare wall and used the floor as our layout surface. Sherry did most of the arranging—credit where it’s due—and she left a large gap in the center for the TV. When picking art, our goal was to avoid pieces that were too visually demanding: nothing overly bright or high-contrast that might compete with whatever’s playing on the screen. The idea was to complement the TV, not upstage it.
Once the arrangement looked good on the floor, we transferred it to the wall, starting with the central frame and making sure it was centered over the TV. There’s something peaceful about having some soft music in the background while you work—Mozart for a sleeping baby, in our case—and it made the whole process more pleasant.
We worked slowly outward from the center, holding each frame up and judging placement by eye. We kept the spacing fairly consistent but didn’t obsess over perfection; a little imperfection in a frame collage feels more organic, and there’s always time for adjustments later. For instance, after snapping a photo we realized that the frame immediately to the right of the TV was too close, so we made a note to nudge it outward after finishing the other side.
With almost everything up on the wall, one oversight became obvious: we had forgotten to account for a light switch behind one of the frames. That was the facepalm moment. It also made us realize we should have centered the TV on the ceiling beams first—another detail that’s easy to miss when you’re mapping things out on the floor.
Thankfully, we’d anticipated potential hiccups and had only used small picture-hanging nails at that point. I hadn’t yet committed to anchors and screws for the heavier pieces, so shifting the whole arrangement a few inches to the right was painless. We moved everything eight inches and managed to cover all but one of the misplaced nail holes, so the frustration was short-lived.
Comparing the final wall to Sherry’s original floor layout, the overall composition stayed true to the initial concept, with one change: we chose two larger frames for the outer edges instead of three smaller ones. It simply looked cleaner once the frames were on the wall.
The room isn’t finished yet, but hanging these pieces already makes it feel more personal. A few favorites made the cut: wedding photo strips, the lot drawing of our first house, and a map we brought back from Hawaii. I expect we’ll swap out a few frames later on, just for variety.
We were especially happy to give our pin map a place of honor. It had briefly lived in the foyer, but this wall suits it much better. Sherry was thrilled to hang two faux white taxidermy pieces as well—hopefully the real deer that gather in the yard won’t mind.
So that’s the tale of two screws, two anchors, thirteen nails, and twenty-nine holes in the wall. Have you been doing any hanging or rearranging lately? Hopefully with fewer unintentional holes than we made.