Gallery Wall

I had wanted to do a gallery wall for a while, and the office seemed like the perfect room to put it in. It might have also been partly because of the fact that the office is the only room we have almost completed so far ;)

Let me tell you, doing a gallery wall is not as easy as it seems. It pretty much took us an entire day to do it.

Here is how we did our gallery wall (step by step)- thanks for the tips Young House Love!:

Step 1: Lay out your frames the way you want them to appear on the wall. I used a white sheet to help me get a better idea of how they would look.

Step 2: Take paper (or old newspaper) and cut pieces exactly the same size as your photos and lay them out in the same pattern. This will be helpful, since you can tape these directly to the wall.

Step 3: Go back to your frame layout (picture #1) and measure the width and length of how big your square will be. Now, Ive seen many gallery walls that are not done in a square, but it makes your life a lot easier if you do (for measuring purposes). My square measured 50" long, by 43.5" wide (or tall).

Step 4: Then we measured the middle of the wall, made a few pencil marks and taped out the square with painters tape on the wall.

Step 5: Once my square was taped out on the wall, I started to tape the newspaper frames into the square:

Step 6: Once each newspaper frame, has been taped to the wall, you can measure and mark on the newspaper where you are going to drill the holes for hanging:

Step 7: Then drill the holes, or get your WONDERFUL husband to drill the holes for you ;)

Step 8: Remove newspaper and add wall hanging hardware, and you are ready to hang your frames!

Step 9: Remove all newspaper from the wall and start putting up your frames!

Here is our wall, almost finished:



The reason why ours took so long as well, had to do with the fact that I hadn't printed any of my photos yet. So I still had to find and print all the photos for each frame.

And here is our finished gallery wall:

We're pretty happy with how it turned out (although Ive already changed a bunch of the pictures in the frames ;)

Oh, and here's a picture of our filing cabinet I mentioned we were getting in a previous post!

A great and interesting way to decorate a wall!

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Cabinet Reveal!

Ok, Im on a roll with the reveals right now-lol.
Ive been dying to finally post these pictures for a while now, so please bear with me, as many reveal posts are still to come.

Ive mentioned many times about searching through kijiji for great finds. Well recently I haven't seen much, however, when we first started looking on kijiji for furniture for our new home, we came across this cabinet:

Ok so It doesn't look like much, and to be honest, it wasn't in the best condition and we probably over-paid for it a little....we just felt bad for the seller I think-lol! She was the young, single mom with a little boy and an adorable golden retriever, and it was Christmas time, and she said she was trying to sell things to make money for Christmas presents.... (I swear even the dogs big sad puppy eye's were saying "please buy our cabinet so we can have money for Christmas" lol).

Maybe I caved...maybe. Plus, she lent us her car to drive it home in (who does that?!) so we really felt bad saying no. We did like it, we just weren't totally sure, but as the reveal shows, it actually turned out pretty good ;)

The cabinet is made out of walnut and has dovetail joints, however, part of the cabinet is veneer and this made for a difficult time when spraying it with paint.

We took this piece to a painter we have been working with for some of our other pieces and she has been fabulous. This piece gave her a lot of grief though, unfortunately. Apparently back in the day (whenever that was, yesteryear, maybe?! lol) they used a shilack to cover wood and it was partly composed of bug guts?! Anyho, this composition does not react well with paint, and often after painting you will see pink or orange colours bleed through the paint.

So of course after lugging this thing home (in our painters van, which she lent us- again, such nice people out there!), after a few days we began to see pink spots all over the cabinet. We had to bring it back (again in her van) and she primed it 2 more times before painting it again.

Now, it only has a bit of a yellow tinge to it in some places...but only if you really stare. So I just dont stare at it....for long.

We thought we could just leave the inside unpainted, but of course when I saw the outside sprayed all gleeming white, I had to paint the inside white...myself. That actually turned out ok, but it does make the drawers stick a bit, so I would not recommed doing that.

The inside had 3 pull out drawers, and there are 2 large drawers on the bottom. Our plan was to use this piece in our office as storage for the printer, paper, etc.

The final product:

Again, we matched the crystal knobs to the ones on the desk, and we are so happy with how it turned out. Office almost complete!

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Finally...Organization!

Recently I was telling a good friend about my mission to find a piece of furniture to use for filing, for our newly updated/renovated office. We want something that will last long, look great and not break the bank.

We had seen a "filing system" at Ikea that looked ok, but wasn't exactly what we wanted and was still going to cost a pretty penny. We debated on it for weeks, but came to the conclusion that if we were willing to spend a few hundred dollars at Ikea on a piece that wasn't exactly what we wanted, we might as well look for something else.

A friend suggested "Crate and Barrel" to me, and since we dont have one in town I hadn't really thought of it before. We had checked a variety of other stores, including Urban Barn, etc but none of them carried office filing system units.

After searching their website and seeing a piece of furniture that looked perfect, we decided to make the drvie down to the closest Crate and Barrel store to check it out.

We walked into the store and immediately LOVED everything in sight! Unfortunately most of the pieces are much more than we can afford, but the filing system was perfect. It wasn't exactly budget friendly, but its well made, solid wood, and we knew it would last a long time and get tons of use. We were sold!

Once the piece is delivered and in the room, I will post pictures of the final product :) Yea for organization!