Colony green and gallery walls!

When we moved into our house nearly a year ago (time flies!), all of the walls were white or antique white, with the exception of the yellow on top, green on bottom kitchen that I love and won't change anytime soon.

We were okay with the white walls. It meant no painting before we moved in (it was in the upper 80s then--no thanks) and we were starting with a clean slate. No wacky former owner's color palate in here!

But after a while--11 months to be exact--it got to me. And this summer I have been tackling many, many projects around the house and it's really starting to feel like our home. One project I keep seeing over and over is a gallery wall, and I knew our large wall in the living room would be perfect for one. But if I was going to hang a gallery wall, I'd have the paint the walls first...

Here was our starting point. These photos were too small for such a large wall. Fun fact: there used to be a doorway to the right center of the wall that led to the kitchen. The previous owners filled it in, but if we look closely, we can still see the outline.

How's this for my project patience? I had to go to the store for paint samples, tape them up, and see them in daylight and evening light. I narrowed in on a green tone right away. Of course, it's none of the ones shown in these samples.

And then I snuck off to purchase my Dutch Boy Refresh (no VOC) flat paint tinted to Colony Green--all while Louis was out to a Saturday morning meeting. Oh boy, was he excited when I came home with all the supplies.

Pretty sure he said, "Wow. You're actually going to do this."

Yup! Now, Louis had never painted walls before, and just the night before was reminding my of my level of patience. He urged me to consider that it wouldn't get done quickly. But I knew better. I painted my bedroom walls (poorly) when I was 12. I knew this could be done in a few hours!

As I got to work taping and painting trim, I even convinced him to start rolling. I taught him the W technique and forgot to take pictures, which is a shame, because I learned that Louis paints in his kitchen apron. :)

And a mere three hours later, we were done! And I mean completely done. It probably helped that it was 80+ degrees in the house (and I realize the irony of not wanting to paint in hot weather last summer) and it dried quickly. So by late Saturday afternoon, we were sitting back admiring our work.

Which meant that Saturday night allowed me to complete my framing and spray painting all of my frames to either white or black to get ready for the gallery wall.

So on Sunday morning, I laid out all of my photos on the floor...

I had measured the wall, subtracted the width of my layout that I liked, divided my two sides of the non-framed portion in half and taped out those boundaries on the floor with painter's tape. You can see one of my corners in the top right of this photo. I also made the same tape mark measurements directly on the wall.

I then laid out and taped together four strips of wax paper. After flipping all of my frames over, I laid the paper on top, traced an outline of my frames, and marked with a sharpie the locations of the hangers.

And with Louis' assistance, I hung the wax paper directly on the wall using my tape pieces as guide for the exact placement. The traces around my frames are hard to see because I had to use a thin-point sharpie that didn't work as well over the waxy paper.

And I hammered my nails directly into the paper.

And then I hung! The wax paper method worked so well--I only had to redo one photo to get my exact spacing right. I wish the this method was my idea, but credit belongs to this genius blogger.

Ah, not only a gallery wall, but colony green walls to boot! This is a pretty true-to-life color, though it reads a little on the yellow side. All of this was complete in a matter of 24 hours! (I showed Louis!)

Now, for what's in the gallery wall:

Clockwise from the top left corner: all of the frames with a yellow arrow are cards from a MN artist with some of our favorite spots from around MN. These were a part of the original layout.

-Top middle is a heart/map project. More on that below.

-A photo of Lilly's first bath!

-A photo I took of the Mill City Ruins in February.

-Bottom middle is our wedding vows. More on that below, too.

-Our first family photo with Lilly.

-A canoe letterpress from my friend, Elana, owner and mastermind behind Fontlove studio!

-And in the very center is a topography map of St. Paul with the State Fairgrounds in a heart. A lovely wedding present from our friend, Caroline. And bonus: our street is on there, too!

This heart-shaped map project was inspired by this item for sale that I continually see popping up on Pinterest. But I wasn't going to order it from Surry when it looked to simple to recreate.

I chose three cities: St. Paul for Louis' hometown, Davenport for me, and Duluth for the location of our honeymoon. I used my heart-shaped cookie cutter and traced outlines from my free rest stop maps. :) I backed them with two pieces of cardstock and framed. So simple. And it's one of my favorite pieces in the gallery.

Another project I've been working on for the last year (in several iterations) finally resulted in this, inspired via this.

The wedding canoers "taking the plunge" is a print from the Kenspeckle Letterpress. We came upon their studio in Duluth, but it was closed. Making a mental note to look up their prints for sale when we got back home, we were pleased to stumble upon this greeting card at the co-op in town. It was perfect (esp. since we had taken a canoe trip on our honeymoon a day before)! So, along with a printout of our vows and our favorite wedding photo, this project was finally complete.

And that's it. From plain white walls to gallery and green in a day! It just seems to take longer to blog about the projects that it does to do them...