Black and White: Before and After

Today I thought it might be fun to do a little before and after.  I love to see other bloggers' transformations, so perhaps you'd like to see mine!

This one is about the landing on my stairs, which you see ahead of you when you walk in my front door.  When I have big wall spaces like that, I always get a little overwhelmed.  Below you can see a "before" photo of my stairs.  I mean really before, like before the house was done!

And below you can see what I did with it.  I love old family photos, and I love new family photos too.  And, of course, I love black and white photos!  So I just put them all together!

The hardest part was converting all my current photos to black and white, but that just meant lots of computer time and standing in front of the printer waiting for them to be done.  I already had quite a few photos of my grandparents and Brent's grandparents, even an old prom photo from my mom that she hates but I think is fabulous!

I love how the photos fill the space, and how easy it was to do.  I just pick up cheap frames at thrift stores or wherever, paint them black if they aren't already, and add matting, or go without.  People love to look at the photos when they come over, and I love to have somewhere to showcase them, rather than storing them in a box that never gets opened.  Plus I can add to the wall anytime I want, since I am not going for an overly-formal arrangement.  I have the same thing in my upstairs hallway, so lots of room to hang new additions!

I will also give you my very amateur way of hanging the photos.  I just started with a large one (in this case, Brent and me in the hospital with Nina right after she was born) and put it in the exact center.  Then I just kind of "eyeball" the rest of the photos, working my way out.  It is not perfect, but because the frames are all different sizes, it seems to work.  No one but you will ever notice if the spacing is off a little bit.  :)