If you’re like me you’ve accumulated quite a few photos over the years. I love the look of a photo gallery and thought this would be a great way to showcase my favorite photos. Even better, I thought, would be to create my gallery on the stairway wall. This turned out to be quite a challenge, but I absolutely LOVE the final result.
Step 1: The first thing that I did (after perusing Pinterest for ideas) was to determine where to place the bottom, and the top of the gallery wall. A little bit of online research determined that the photos should start at 19 inches from the floor (or stair in this case) so I measured 19 inches from each stair and dropped a line of painters tape.
Step 2: I decided I wanted the photos to frame a wall hanging I purchased at HomeGoods so I place the wall hanging in the center. The wall hanging’s diameter determined the top of the photo gallery. I measured from the top of the wall hanging to the stair below it and repeated this measurement (47 inches) at the top stair and at the bottom stair. I dropped another line of painter’s tape using these reference points. This created two parallel lines with the same slope as the stairway.
Step 3: Using painter’s tape and the slope of the stairs, I recreated this space on the floor so I could lay out the framed photos I had selected. The slope of the stairs was determined using good ole rise and run. The rise being the height of each stair (for my stairs this measured as 7 5/8″). The run is the depth of each stair. My stairs are 11″ deep. I placed a vertical piece of painter’s tape on the floor for reference . Next I measure 11″ perpendicular from vertical then 7 5/8″ down and parallel to the vertical tape reference measurements. I marked this spot with a small piece of tape and repeated until I had got to the other side or end of the stairway template. Repeating these over and down measurements created a sloped line along the floor representing the bottom line of my gallery. The top line was created by making several marks along the length of the bottom line at 47″ (the diameter of the the wall hanging.
I tried to use a good mix of different size photo frames (4×6, 5×7, 8×10, and a few odd shaped frames). I arranged the photo frames in the template and moved them around until I was happy with the result. Once I had the layout, I took pictures to remember where each photo belonged. Most importantly, I kept track of how many photos I used of each daughter to keep it even!
Step 4: Lastly, I hung the photos (okay, my husband hung the photos). I considered using paper templates of each photo to hang and replace with the real frame but it seemed to me this would take an eternity. Instead, I decided to live dangerously and use a tool called “The Picture Hanging Tool”. This sells on Amazon for $12.99 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083TLSGNH/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_glWtEbDEYH390). This tool saved me hours as it allows you to figure out where you want to hang the picture and mark the wall before picking up the hammer. Using the layout photo and hanging tool, I carefully transferred each photo & frame to the wall.
I absolutely LOVE my staircase gallery and plan to update photos and frames as the years go by.