Huge Blank Wall = Amazing Photo Backdrop
2 Materials
$56
24 Hours
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We have the world's ugliest stairwell that USED to have a ceiling mount fixture. The burned out light bulb had NEVER been changed.
As we were doing some renovations in the house, I decided to take down the current dining room pendant light and replace it with a chandelier. Thus, I had a handy, dandy, LONG, hanging light on my hands.
As I tripped down the stairwell for the millionth time, I realized that I could put our used pendant light to good use - in the stairwell. Because of the height and the fact that scaffolding would be required, we opted to have a professional installer come in and change the light.
For the first time in 7 years, we had a basement stairwell light.
As we were doing some renovations in the house, I decided to take down the current dining room pendant light and replace it with a chandelier. Thus, I had a handy, dandy, LONG, hanging light on my hands.
As I tripped down the stairwell for the millionth time, I realized that I could put our used pendant light to good use - in the stairwell. Because of the height and the fact that scaffolding would be required, we opted to have a professional installer come in and change the light.
For the first time in 7 years, we had a basement stairwell light.
Pendant light moved from dining room
Once we had the light in place, we found that the walls were battered and nasty. Since we had 10' ceilings in our house, the top of the wall was almost 20' in the air from the bottom of the stairwell, the 'landing' was in the actual basement. We had no flat floor space to even attempt to set up any kind of a expandable ladder.
Painted, still need more drywall fixes.
Then, my 'real' work began. I had envisioned a wall full of photos. With the ledge, it was going to be a great place to do something like this as no one would 'bump' into the wall and knock things off or out of whack.
Laying out the arrangement!
So, our fabulous painter friend showed up with his scaffolding and tools and set up quite a contraption in the hallway. He had expandable straight ladders and used the bottom planks of 2 of his HUGE old pallets to make the catwalk.
Let the hanging begin...
The hanging process lasted a full 8 hours, including set-up, measuring, adding picture back hangers to some of the 'less perfect' old frames, etc. We placed the smaller, non-hanging pictures on the shelves. It worked well.
Another view.. one collage left.
He started by hanging all the 8"x10" frames across the top and then worked his way down the center. He centered the biggest collage -a gift from my daughter and moved on from there.
Another view from the scaffolding.
He worked his way out to the wall and then back into the center and bottom.
Scaffolding is gone!
We added in our initials (C and J) and the scaffolding was gone. Voila.
View from the bottom of the steps
I couldn't be more pleased with the outcome. Yes, we paid some money for help, but given the difficulty of the task, I'd do it again, all day!!
The End Result
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2 of 273 comments
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This sucks.
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In my almost 90 years on this earth, I've learned that how people decorate their homes describes their personality. Believe me, if they display kid's pictures everywhere, it's all they can talk about too.
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I like this. However, how are people going to see the pictures high up on the wall? If I did this in my house, someone would say I was being inconsiderate of other's being able to view the photos-of course I wouldn't care that much. Just saying.
I would pay the 80 dollars to have the task of hanging your photos! Gotta chuckle though, and ask.... after you hung up all the photos, all the patch work needed may not have been as noticeable?
Looks good, who will dust for you🙃
My parents have hallway front front door entrance to kitchen. One wall of the hallway has stairs to basement. They put up pictures on that wall and I never like it because the hallway is too narrow to enjoy looking at the pictures. So I made a suggestion to my dad so to take down the hallway wall and open up the hallway. Then put the pictures on the opened hallway wall. This will make the entrance e look bigger, brighter and enjoyable to look at the pictures. My dad is hesitate to this idea cuz of $ to take down and build a new wall.
From your picture, I dont think you are able to do that? However, if I am mistaken, then why not take down the wall opposite from the wall with pictures? Good luck.