After three months in our new home we finally found enough energy to hang pictures.
Our “Boommate” will be moving in with us in a couple of months and we needed to get the pictures out of her space downstairs where they are all stacked against a wall. Our new home is bigger than our old home, but has less wall space for picture display since there are many more windows. Part of the hanging process involved deciding which ones we will continue to store in the furnace room. Husband decided he didn’t want any of his old family pictures hung. That made things a lot easier, as some of them are pretty big.
For some reason I make Husband anxious by my picture hanging method, which involves careful measuring and centering. He worries that the pictures will fall off the walls because the nails and/or fasteners will rip out of the drywall, and wondered why we didn’t secure them in the wall studs. I explained that the hangers pictured in the header photo are very secure and that none of our pictures is so heavy as to require securing in a stud. I think he believes me, but still is anxious about the whole process.
In a tribute to our famous local photographer Jim Brandenburg, we hung all his nature photos in the dining room A large John Coltrane poster graces the area with the piano and Husband’s guitar and cello. The house is really feeling like home.
What are your picture hanging methods? What makes your abode feel like home?
Trail Baboon 
In Taiwan, even the interior walls were brick, covered in plaster. Hanging required a masonry drill.
In Holland, MI, the house is 100 years old, and the interior walls are “lath and plaster”. A drill is recommended here, too.
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in some the old plaster homes i am familiar with a molding is run around the top op the wall like baseboard on the floor. from the molding s hooks and wire are measured and pictures hung
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Lots of family photos and enlargements of photos I took on vacations years ago. Quilts all over the house too. Sandra is into knick-knacks and the like, so there are no empty bookshelves. Lots of books too, even though we’re slowly culling the ones we’ll never read or don’t want for sentimental reasons.
My office has golf posters, wildlife/nature/canoe/BWCAW photos plus “work books” on writing craft, and signed first novels of about 50 author friends/acquaintances/idols (Dennis Lehane!) Otherwise it’s a comfortable mess.
Furniture is eclectic. Nothing newer than 10 years old other than new kitchen stools we just got last week because old ones had cracked seats and weren’t comfortable to sit on. Neither broke, but it sure felt like the most used one might someday.
Chris in Owatonna
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We, too, have been culling books. Those remaining on the shelves on one side of the room are so orderly and attractive now that my wife is thinking about going shopping for more.
It’s time to do the non-fiction books on the other side. I ask myself, “though you used to be a preacher, do you need THAT many Bibles any more?”
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Kind of all over the map here – some walls are the old plaster, some seems to be drywall where the usual picture hanging hooks work. We have a lot of mirrors, some of them very heavy, that need the studs behind them. It sometimes makes for odd placement – not exactly where I’d choose to have them, but after several years you don’t notice!
What makes it feel like home is spending time here… getting the side tables by the couch filled with just the right stuff. It may look a little cluttered, and will need spiffing up for company. The table next to “my chair” has a coffee warmer, pencil cup, engagement calendar, lotion, dental floss, a book and a magazine.
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My spouse has tended, wherever we’ve resided, to create a “nest” or 2 in varied locations. It currently occupies much of a couch, an end table, and a recliner “around the corner” from that. I used to smile inwardly about that. I just looked. I have nests, too, across the room.
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Yes, “nest” is a good way to describe it!
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I have heard cleaning people talk about “nests” in the homes they clean. They discuss this as a lot of clutter.
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Who cares what cleaning people think? Cleaning people don’t have any emotional or associational investment in any home arrangements. I imagine everything that slows them down is clutter to them
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between you and me we have an average number of bibles
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Our present house has plaster and lath walls and so any nail or screw driven through the plaster and into the lath is amply secure. Even when our home has been newer, with drywall walls, usually a nail has been sufficient for ordinary pictures. There are picture hangers for drywall that are designed to pierce the wall and then curve around to brace against the back of the sheetrock, if those would assuage some anxiety.
Speaking for myself, it’s pictures and the presence of abundant books in every room (except the bathroom) that makes our house engaging and homey.
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i put canvases in the bathroom rather than paper. they hold up just fine
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We had a handyman service come to hang a heavy oak mirror in the livingroom over the sofa. It is on screws drilled into studs. It was too heavy for Husband and me to do.
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find a guy. youre gonna be there a while
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Slowly getting ready for next move to wherever my daughter moves. Thrown out lots of stuff. Pictures! Threw out almost all the unframed ones. Have the hanging framed ones to go. There have been two people here in the last two days who say they will want to come back and take some rather than see them trashed.
I have hung so many pictures in four different homes, some pictures quite large, hanging off nails in drywall. No picture has ever fallen. Sandra and I group pictures in a casual sense of balance and a casual sense of what made a group. We did not hang many family photos, but we did hang them in their own group with the portraits I did of three grandkids.
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Most of our family photos are hung in the little hallway between the bedrooms – a little “gallery”.
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Sandra’s nasty lying thieving little sister destroyed all of Sandra’s childhood and family photos. So it limited what she had. I have one framed collection of my family history.
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How do your really feel about Sandra’s sister, Clyde? Snort
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I sense some hostlity.
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id love to get my hands on some of your work clyde
i love your pastels and paintings
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In addition to books and pictures, being able to play our CDs and LP’s also makes this feel like home. One of the first things we did after moving was set up our CD player and buy a new turntable.
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Rise and Hammer That Nail, Baboons,
I think I have really bad habits about picture hanging–as long as I have hole filler (that little can of plaster), a putty knife, a picture level, and patch paint, I am willing to just hammer in a picture hanger and pop the picture up where I want it. This has led to some really bad holes in the wall, as well as broken frames and glass. Usually that does not happen, but when it does it makes a mess; yet I find no motivation to do it differently. I just repair it and move on. Other people I know are more like Renee–very careful about measuring, etc. Oh, well.
What makes it feel like home? I love a few of my family antiques: The Shaker box used for sugar and flour, the bookcase made of ancient oak (from the 1870s), the wagon box, etc. These remind me of how little the previous generations had and how hard their lives were. I owe them so much and these few belongings cause me to think of them often. I also love Native artwork that is so earthy and close to nature.
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