living room gallery wall!

Now this is living, people!  I am feeling 1000% better about our apartment now that we finally have some art on the walls. Our ceilings are decently high, so I knew I wanted to load one wall up with frames before we even moved in. Once Kurt heroically hung my TV on the wall (this required some intense cursing and trips to three different hardware stores) I started the planning process of hanging the art. 

I've seen some great tutorials around the internet about how to plan and hang a gallery wall, but I decided to make it very complicated in my own nerdy way. I photographed all our framed pieces, cropped them down in Photoshop, and then arranged them in AutoCAD (see above). Yes, it was a lot of prep work, but having an idea mapped out ahead of time made the installation process fly. I only strayed from the original layout slightly when I came across some extra items to hang or changed my mind about the placement of some things. 

The process! (Click if it's not moving.) Our TV isn't perfectly straight, so I didn't bother measuring much or using a level. Maybe that's why it went so quickly!

I'm one of those mean girlfriends that is making Kurt save all of this football paraphernalia for his future "man room", so most of the stuff I hung is mine. I hope it doesn't seem too girly. Although I have a feeling what I hung on one of the other living room walls makes me a super cool girlfriend in the end. I'll share that soon!

I seriously love how the wall turned out. Now I'm inspired to get moving on the rest of the place! (Any tips on concealing TV wires?!)

I hope everyone has a lovely 4th of July! Woo hoo America!