First things first: were we right to suspect foxes might be the new “it” animal—moving aside birds and giraffes? This video certainly makes a convincing case.
With that out of the way, back to our regular project update.
Sherry and I have long liked the idea of surrounding a television with artwork to soften the large black rectangle it creates on a wall. We also happen to own an embarrassingly large number of frames—enough that choosing from them is not a speedy process. After more dithering than I’d care to admit, we finally hung the first frame collage in this house.
We started with a plain, bare wall and laid out the frames on the floor to experiment with different arrangements. Sherry did most of the planning; she used the floor as a work surface and left a clear gap in the center where the TV would go. In choosing pieces for the collage we favored artwork that was understated—nothing too bright or high-contrast—so the wall art wouldn’t compete with what’s on the screen.
Once we liked how the layout looked on the floor, we began transferring it to the wall. We started with the frame at the center of the arrangement, making sure it was centered above the planned TV location. For reasons I can’t fully explain, we had classical music playing while Clara slept in the next room; Mozart in the background somehow made hanging frames feel calm and pleasant.
From the center we built outward on one side, holding each frame up and gauging the spacing by eye. We kept spacing generally consistent but didn’t obsess over exact measurements—part of what makes a gallery wall feel collected rather than factory-made is a touch of imperfection. After stepping back we noticed one frame to the right of the TV sat too close, so we made a mental note to nudge it outward once the other side was done.
Near the end of the first pass we realized we’d missed one important detail: we’d neglected to account for a light switch, which left the bottom-left frame awkwardly positioned. That’s when it dawned on us that we should have centered the TV relative to the ceiling beams before moving frames from floor to wall. Floor layouts can be deceiving; certain sightlines only become apparent once you’re standing in the room.
We were annoyed at the miscalculation, but thankfully we hadn’t fully committed most pieces yet. At that point we’d only used small picture-hanging nails, so shifting the arrangement a few inches to the right was easy. In the end we moved everything eight inches and only had one visible extra hole to patch, which spared us a lot of extra work and frustration.
Comparing the final wall to Sherry’s original floor “rough draft,” the composition stayed mostly the same. The main change was swapping three smaller outer frames for two larger ones on each edge, which looked cleaner and more balanced once hung.
Although the room is far from finished, having our favorite items on the wall makes the space feel more personal. The collage includes wedding photostrips, the lot drawing from our first house, and a map we brought back from Hawaii. We’re happy with the sentimental mix, but expect we’ll swap a piece or two down the road just for variety.
One piece we were especially glad to place was our pin map, which now has a prominent spot on the wall. We briefly tried it in the foyer, but it looks better here among the gallery. Sherry was thrilled to include not one but two faux white taxidermy pieces; hopefully the neighborhood deer will take no offense.
So that’s the tale of two screws, two anchors, thirteen nails, and twenty-nine holes in the wall. Have you been hanging art or making changes to your walls lately? We’d love to hear whether you managed fewer accidental holes than we did.