Living Room Gallery Art + Open Kitchen Shelves

I was struggling with how to decorate the large blank wall in our living room, so I reached out to Nesting With Grace for some gallery wall ideas. See how I used her advice to decorate a previous naked wall in our living room.

Before

Above is the listing picture, the wall I’m struggling with is on the right. I was excited to have a blank slate to decorate, but it turns out that that’s almost harder!

Please excuse my iPhone panoramic picture. Since moving in, we mounted our TV, hung some curtains, got some bar stools and put one picture up. Luckily our sofa, man chair and rug fit the space pretty well. I was struggling with what to put on the walls because that air vent and the openness to the kitchen were throwing me a curveball.

“Ask A Designer Series”

Enter the “Ask A Designer Series”! Brooke allows her email subscribers to submit one design question and then complies her advice in her “Ask A Designer Series” section of her blog. I love reading these blog posts because I often have the same issue. So I submitted the panoramic photo above to get her help:

Her first tip was to plan all the walls before putting nails in the walls. Obviously I went wrong here but slapping that wine picture up. Her suggestion of something round to offset the rectangular TV and something light to offset the dark sofa were spot on. But my favorite advice was to replace the wine picture with some shelves. To read her entire post go here. It’s full of other great ideas on how to decorate your walls.

After

Gallery Wall Art

Let’s first talk about the wall art. We picked out the clock and frames from HomeGoods.  HomeGoods can be very hit/miss, but this trip was a huge hit! Luckily Nolan came with, because I needed help carrying everything. The roman numerals are 2, 27, 2010, the year we were married. I swear I’m not always cheesy. I found “Let’s Stay Home” print on etsy and had it printed at FedEx. The giant P is from Amazon.

Might still need something above and to the left of the clock. I’d also like to do some pillow upgrades. Never ending right?

Open Kitchen Shelves

Sharing these shelves is timely this week. See the two white doves on the left side of the middle shelf? Those are from my grandma who passed away this week. I remember them always being on the bottom shelf of their TV stand. I’m so grateful to have known her for 30+ years and to have a few sentimental pieces to remember her by.

Any who, like I said, my favorite suggestion was the open kitchen shelves. I considered making them, like we did in our Shorview house office. Then I found these shelves on Amazon Prime for only $139. We assembled them while my FIL was here for Thanksgiving. It was really handy to have a third set of hands to hold it up as we screwed it into the wall. The wall anchors that came with it were flimsy and too small, so we used different, meatier ones. I believe my nieces (pictured on the bottom shelf) could do pull ups on the bars without it coming loose from the wall.

I’m still playing around with what to display and how to arrange everything. Like maybe I shouldn’t have the wooden ‘eat’ sign on the same shelf as the wicker balls. Or maybe add more more color.