DIY Picture Ledge

Yay! I love it when I can show you a super cheap, quick and easy project that can make such a difference. That’s what this project is.. Our hall has never been my favorite.  It’s dark and narrow and full of paneling and has no personality. I made a gallery wall a long time ago with pictures of the girls at 6 months, a year, 18 months and 2. I used dollar store frames and just taped the pictures to the back of the filler picture they came with. So yeah, kinda sad. I would say that I have to straighten the frames almost everyday and the week before I finally decided to do something about it, one of the frames finally gave up on life, fell and broke.  My options for the wall were, spend lots of money on nice frames or
build a ledge and style it and switch up the pictures however often I
want. Done deal!
I’ve loved the look of pictures ledges for so long but was
reluctant to add one in the hall because I was nervous about people
bumping into it or the kids knocking their heads. Then I realized if I
put it to the height it needed to be (above the crooked thermostat), the girls will be way older by the
time they could knock into it and, by then, they should know not scale the walls when they’re walking. ; )

So here’s the before, after the fall.

I should also say that I had already pulled the frames off the wall when I realized I had no before picture and because that’s blogging 101, I stuck the nails back in the wall and hung the pictures back up (in incorrect order) for this picture.

You’ll need the following materials for this project:

1×4 cut to length
1×3 cut to length
1×2 cut to length
wood glue
hammer
2″ counter sunk nails (those are just nails with small heads that can go into wood, not big ole circles on the top)
paint or stain
screws for install
drill for pilot holes on install

The shelf is for the wall between the girls room and playroom. I made it 5ft long with about 15″ on either side of each door. So the first thing I did, was cut the wood to length.

There were a couple different ways I could have positioned the wood. I saw some tutorials with the 1×4 as the bottom piece. This would have been fine for a wall with no traffic but because I wanted it to be as narrow as possible I choose to use the 1×3 as the base. The 1×4 butts up to the base and will be screwed into the wall and the 1×2 acts as the lip in the front so that nothing slides off.

After I decided on the shape, I used wood glue and nails to connect the front and back pieces to the base.

After it was assembled, I brought it in and centered and leveled it on the wall.

Then it was time for white paint. We all painted. We’re very serious about our art.

I tried to wait patiently until the next day to install it but WHO AM I KIDDING?! I don’t do stuff like that.

Since the hallway is paneling, we used 2 1/2″ screws and drove them right into the studs. We hung one side first, checked again to make sure it was level and then did 2 more screws into the next studs. We drilled pilot holes first so that the wood didn’t split. Thank you sweet hubs, for hanging a shelf for me when I told you we could wait until the next day..

Then I got to style it! I love the way it turned out.

I played around with the arrangement of the frames and made it go shortest to tallest so that your eye kept moving down the hall. The tall dark frame at the beginning would have been a little too heavy and would have brought attention to the front and not all the way to the end of the shelf. Sounds kinda picky but you’d be surprised what a difference stuff like this makes.

The plant covers up the thermostat. I also love that it breaks up the straight line of the shelf. Hopefully it stays alive.. the hallway is dark and I don’t have a good track record with these plants yet. Also, I really need to water plants before I take pictures….

 I used frames we already had and mostly black and white pictures.

Sorry, now I watered and took happier plant pictures.

The dots on this mirror aren’t there anymore.. I’ve painted it although I’m not sure I love how it looks yet. I like the reflection now though.

The pictures in the tall frame are the girls both at 18 months. Sweet pumpkins.

The print of our house is from Geralyn at Door Before. Such a cute little addition to the wall.

This is one of those projects that, now that it’s done, I can’t believe we didn’t do it sooner. From start to finish it took about an hour not including dry time and parenting time. We spent maybe $10 in materials. That’s a good project.

Is there a wall you think you could use one or two of these on? Tell me about it!  Let me know if you have any questions or if I left anything out.

Thanks for reading, friends.

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