PHOTO GALLERY

Our house has an open staircase that can be seen from all three levels. I am dreaming of adding wainscoting, but until then I needed to do something with this empty space. In our last house we had a large empty wall that where we created a large gallery wall with our family pictures. While I still love a gallery wall, I was ready for a change!

Here's the empty wall I was looking to fill. There is an awkward stair ledge that I decided to use to my advantage.

I had my husband help me install a piece of brick mould that we picked up from Lowe's while shopping for supplies to build a chalkboard (more on that later!). I was looking for a piece of moulding that would be sturdy enough to hold the frames in place, and this thicker brick mould was just what I had in mind. The moulding was already primed, so after filling a few small nail holes and caulking the seams it was ready to paint! I used 2 coats of Chalk White by Benjamin Moore to match the trim throughout the house.

After the paint was dry, I spent a little time rearranging my frames. These were the frames I had used in my wall gallery previously with a few new white frames added to break up all of the black frames.

Looking down at the finished gallery ledge from the top of the stairs. I had always used our professional family pictures exclusively in the frames, but after seeing it and how much the kids had grown, I updated it with some prints from our summer vacation. I kept all of the prints in black and white to keep the look more cohesive.

The ledge can easily be used to display other artwork in the future or changed out to decorate seasonally, but for now I'm enjoying the family pictures.