I tried a new way of mapping the wall after seeing a template on Danielle Oakey's blog. I think if you are doing a smaller, less substantial gallery this template would have been great. In our case, there was a lot of cutting little shapes and several frame sizes were missing, so I was making my own shapes too. For all intents and purposes, it was helpful to visually map the wall and see how it might puzzle together though.
What ended up being more helpful once we got upstairs was actually creating a grid on the floor and mapping the frames that way. Using two tape measurers (similar to the template above) I was able to keep the frames we were using in the right spots vertically and horizontally, the same way they'd appear on our walls.
Then I went about it the old-fashioned way, which is to say that I cut out paper the size of each frame and used that on the walls to make sure everything fit before ever touching a hammer or nail. This was super helpful when we got to the smaller side and realized we forgot to account for the light switch.
This was my inspiration, from Interiors Magazine.
And this is a not so great, iphone picture (like all of the other photos in this post! oops, sorry) of what we ended up with. I still have to fill some frames with mats and photos and switch out some older photos for new ones, but the frames are finally off the floor and on the walls.
And for anyone who's wondering -- the kids don't touch the frames at all. They were curious at first, but I don't think they're that interesting to them. Though for the first week they were up, Reese would stop and point out everyone she knew on the wall -- "thas gramma, thas papa, thas nana gray" (her great grandmother that she calls nana gray since she has gray hair...) it was cuteness times infinity.
