Easy Home DIY: How I Put Together My Gallery Wall

I'm not crafty, & I'm definitely not a DIY home person. I don't want to own a house, in part because I don't want to have to spend my weekends, like, cleaning out gutters & re-caulking kitchens, or whatever. When it comes to at-home items, like headboards & centerpieces, forget Pinterest; if I can buy it instead, I will.

Perhaps that's why it took me a whopping nine months to hang photos in our "new" apartment. We moved in May, & boxes of artwork have just been sitting around, gathering dust & taking up space. It seemed like so much work to hang things... that I just didn't bother to do it.

Finally, last weekend, I'd had enough - enough of the bare walls, enough of the boxes of un-hung art - so I got to work readying our bedroom gallery wall.

But again, because I'm impatient & not into home decor stuff, I did it my own way, using a method I've perfected over the years, what with all my many moves. Instead of whipping out levels & measuring tapes, I used my patented "paper replica" method.

Oh, & by the way: I spent nine months avoiding this project because I thought it would take too long. Final running time? About 90 minutes. Yes, I should've done this much sooner. Here's how I did it:

1. Lay out your gallery wall on the floor.

The top photo in this post shows step one of the process. I got out all out all the pieces I wanted to include in the gallery wall & laid them out on the floor in the way I might want to hang them on the wall. I rearranged it until I landed on the combination I liked best, which I then photographed.

2. Create paper versions of each piece of art.

Using plain old computer paper, I created properly sized replicas of each piece, labeling them with a quick description of each piece of art so I wouldn't lose track of any of them.

3. Tape paper replicas to the wall.

Referring back to the photograph of my floor layout, I recreated that layout on my wall with the paper replicas. I taped them to the wall using washi tape so that it wouldn't do any damage to the paint.

4. Nail paper replicas to the wall. 

Checking the backs of each piece of artwork to determine their hanging mechanisms, I nailed each paper replica to the wall, then simply ripped the paper replica off the wall, over the nail.

5. Hang artwork! 

Finally, I hung each piece of art on its respective nail &... voilà! Gallery wall complete, nine months later. The lighting in my bedroom is fairly terrible, so please bear with me on this photo, but I think the final product is pretty good. Yes, it's a little bit too close to the ceiling - but hey, I've got low ceilings.

I also hung a few pieces in my office, & I hung a painting from my grandmother in our bathroom. I have a few more pieces to hang, including a very large, framed Paul Duda print that will likely require a second set of hands & a level - but for now, I'm loving our homier apartment. A little art goes a long way!

What's on your walls?