Ok, not the whole world, but a nice sampling of it. If you watched our house tour video yesterday, you may have spotted these prints in the hallway above the board & batten we installed. Here are closer photos and a straightforward description of how we did it.
The project was simple. We purchased a beautiful city-themed calendar from Anthropologie after New Year’s for $13 (calendars tend to go on sale in January), but we never intended to use it as a calendar. Each year we make a quirky homemade calendar, so this one became inspiration for wall art instead.
We loved the illustrations for each city and thought they would look great displayed together in frames. Initially we considered hanging all 12 prints in a grid in the guest room, but we wanted a single, larger focal point for the big blank wall above the chairs there.
After finishing the board & batten hallway project, it occurred to us that the prints could be spaced down the corridor to create a visual rhythm as you walk the hall. We tested it and liked the result: the artwork breaks up the long hallway and makes the pass-through feel intentional and curated.
To keep every frame at the same height we used a laser level down the hall and marked two dots for each frame, five inches apart. We left ten inches of horizontal space between the centerlines of each frame so the series reads as a cohesive unit without feeling crowded.
We hammered nails at the marked points and used two nails per frame. The Ikea Ribba frames we chose hang securely on two nails about five inches apart, which holds them level without constant adjustment. The double-nail approach also lets you slide each frame slightly left or right for precise spacing even after the nails are set.
Sliding the frame onto the two nails gives a snug, level display and reduces the need to retighten or straighten a frame that would otherwise hang on a single nail. The result is a neat, stable gallery-like installation that stays put.
The eight Ribba frames we used are from Ikea and are inexpensive—about $9 each. We already owned four and purchased four more to complete the run, so the whole hallway gallery cost about $49 total: roughly $36 for frames and $13 for the calendar. That’s an affordable way to transform an empty corridor into a personal travel gallery.
The change went from blank wall to finished display in about a month, and now we pass that hallway many times a day. Although we’ve only visited one of the eight cities featured—New York—John has jokingly started calling the collection our travel bucket list. It’s a daily reminder of places we’d like to see: Rome, Paris, Istanbul, Sydney, London, Amsterdam, and Rio de Janeiro are all represented in the art.
Here’s a small personal confession: three of my favorite spots in the house aren’t traditional rooms. They are:
- the framed hallway that connects the living room, kitchen, and our bedroom
- the hallway with these city prints that leads to the other three bedrooms
- Clara’s big girl room, which I love because it’s come so far from where it started
What are your favorite areas of your home? Maybe it’s an unusual spot like a pantry, a cozy closet, a tiled nook, or a small bathroom. Or maybe you prefer more standard choices like the living room, sunroom, or bedroom. Home favorites can be practical or sentimental—the important thing is that those places feel like yours.
Update: Want to know where we got items in our house or what paint colors we used? Click the button on our site to shop our home selections.
