DIY Gallery Ledges

The house we are renting now has a lot of great features. It's the biggest house we've ever lived in and is perfect for visitors (hint hint), has a nice yard, tons of storage space, and several other amenities we've enjoyed. But there are a few shortcomings as well and one of them is that it doesn't have a fireplace and therefore has no mantle!

I love my mantle decor for not only some personal touches, but because we have Cale's framed sketch as well as a picture of Daren displayed and I wanted those up in our house somehow, mantle or not.

I thought about just doing some sort of gallery wall above the couch and using a lot of the same things I normally have up (I can't find an old picture of just the mantle, but you can see it here), but in the end I decided that I wanted to try out a gallery ledge.  The wall above the couch needed something anyway, so seemed like the perfect space for it.

So off to Lowe's we went to get the lumber for Miles to build a shelf similar to the ones he built in Mary's nursery from the Ana White $10 ledge plans.

Miles got fancy on this project and decided to add crown molding and I think it adds a perfect touch. I was torn between staining and painting, but I loved the look of my white frame gallery wall that we had up in Texas, so I decided to paint this ledge white and add all white frames to it and include some of the pictures from our old mantle.

Once we had it hung up I quickly realized that it would not be able to hold all the pictures I had from the gallery wall (with a few changed out) and some of the mantle pictures, so in addition to the gallery picture ledge, I also have a smaller gallery wall near our kitchen table that looks like this

Pictures include Cale's sunset name, Roscoe, 7 month old Finn, 

and also these two pictures of Miles and Finn and Miles and Mary

Family picture on Cale's bench

Our 'Home Sweet Home' needlepoint and story about it from Miles' mom

But back to the gallery ledges. . .

Once all painted and dried, Miles hung the ledge (which is six feet) above the couch and I got busy arranging and rearranging pictures on it.

I'm really pleased with out it all came together and hope that we can find a spot for it in our next house.

Pictures include: Miles and I on our 4th Anniversary just 11 days before Finn was born, 

blue bonnet family picture, and family map.

 Miles and Mary, our family "what a difference a day makes", Daren and Roscoe, 

Aunt Kate and baby Finn

and my beautiful babies

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