Part of making my home…homier… has been hanging up artwork on the walls. I’m particularly liking my grid of record albums up in the living room at the moment:

Here are some tricks I’ve found along the way when it comes to hanging artwork:

• For the love of god, use a level. Don’t just “eyeball” it, especially when you’re hanging something in a grid pattern like this. Nothing will be completely square, and you’ll find yourself tilting your head ever so slightly every time you look at your handiwork. 

despite your best efforts, you may find slight variation in size and squareness of the art itself. Try not to sweat it. 

• Create a “guide” to hang. For this project, I cut strips of tape the length of each record and put them along where the top of the record would hang. This allowed me to figure out the level and spacing without committing to a bunch of practice holes in the wall.

Don’t forget to take down your guides when you’re done. I had bits of blue tape peeking through for about a week before I wised up and took it down. 

• Bring in a second opinion. Have an extra set of hands to give you nails. Make sure someone can step back and tell if, even though it’s level on paper, it seems to be tilting in relation to the crown molding (grrrr…)

Bonus points- my little helper was actually pretty little 🙂

There you have it! A quick project that adds a lot of life and personality to a room! I’m hoping to get some forward progress this weekend on our bonus basement room… we’ll see how that goes with the whole being sick and obsessed with Christmas thing I’ve got going.