We recently have had my Mother-in-law move in with us. This last year she lost her husband (and mother four days later) and was living in a large house all by herself two hours away from two of her kids, four hours away from three of her kids, and a plane trip away from one. So the time had come for her to be closer to family, and since we were one of the only ones with a spare bedroom suitable for her needs she moved in with us.
Now, although I had tried to make things comfortable for her here I knew it wasn't her style. Everytime I visited her house I was struck by one thing, and no, it was not the pink carpet in the living room. It was the massive amount of pictures she had of her family. They covered every bookcase/entertainment center/wall she had. And I knew if we were to make her room feel like home we would need to bring those pictures with us.
However, I am not a picture hanging person. Most of my walls are bare and I like it that way. Nor do I like holes in my walls. (As a small child there was this spider that lived at the very top of my wall for years and years, and I was terrified of it. It wasn't until I grew up a bunch of years later and got glasses I learned it was just a hole.) So, I had to come up with another solution.
I had seen picture ledges before and thought they looked cool. Not only do they provide lots of storage space, are thick enough to layer pictures, but the pictures can easily be moved around added to removed, etc. The list just goes on.
I looked into buying some from Ikea, or Amazon or the like, but figured it was cheaper to just make my own. So we went to the store, bought some 1x4's (4 of them), 1x2's (2 of them) and some screws (because we were running low).
We got out the chop saw, cut them each in half, then one set we cut in half again. I kept trying to explain this to my husband but he couldn't understand what was happening, so I drew a sketch for him. He had no idea it was so many.
We got them all cut, sanded, and ready to go. We chose to keep them raw, I will probably paint them white in the future to blend in with the wall, but that won't be until Peggy moves out and we have a baby to fill the room with.
We then drilled holes in them and put the screws in. I measured it all out so they would fit perfectly, but alas, we didn't need to do all that work. The small ones have way to many screws. And the larger ones didn't get predrilled holes in the piece it was screwed into. They did get them in the ones that went all the way through. I figure about 6" apart will work fine.
My husband then hung them all up. He started at the top, and Peggy thinks it is too high. You see, she is short (under 5') and doesn't want anything up that high. We may alter them a bit but for now she isn't going to. When I came home they had put up a bunch of pictures, and I thought it looked a little sad.
So, I told Peggy what box I had hid the smaller pictures in and we got to work. You see when we moved her up I played some tetris and got things nicely packed in. She didn't know they were even here. Lesson: check all your boxes when moving in. I think I need to take this advise as well. I did have lots of fun organizing them so that you could see them all and have space for everything. Amazing to see how many could fit on it.
All in all I love it. It looks so nice to have all those pictures together and up so that she can remember her family everytime she is in her room. She loves it as well, and I am pretty sure she is already running out of room on them and wants more.