Our Staircase Photo Gallery Wall - Finally Complete!

Way back in 2011 (holy cow, was it really that long ago?), I shared the reveal of the gallery wall in our staircase. It only spanned one wall at that time, and I figured eventually I'd fill up the other wall but it's never really been a priority. To say we've had some other projects on our plate since then would be a severe understatement. 

Below is a quick reminder of what the existing gallery wall looks like. (If you want to see a blast from the past, you should check out the first reveal post to what the wall color used to be!) The frames are filled with photos from vacations, but they were starting to feel pretty outdated.

Seeing as how we've taken quite a few other vacations over the years, I recently decided it was time to extend the gallery to the opposite wall, down the stairs that lead to our basement.

I wanted to take the same approach, which was a variety of different frame designs and sizes that would all be painted white or ivory. A couple weeks ago as I drove by an At Home store, I decided to pop in to check out their frame selection. There was conveniently a clearance event taking place, so I ended up filling my arms with as many frames as I could hold — some of which weren't on sale, but still cheap. I bought 9 frames for a total of $58, which felt pretty reasonable.

Home Exterior Painting Reveal: Quest for the Perfect Gray

Hello again, friends — I have a lot to fill you in on since my last update two months ago! Although if you choose to just skim through and look at pictures rather than read my long post, I won't blame you.

If you'll recall, I was internally tortured with deciding on the perfect gray for our home exterior. Well, we finally did settle on Benjamin Moore Kendall Charcoal at 75%. (The 75% is an important detail, as you'll find out later...)

Label from my sample container. We had it matched at Sherwin-Williams even though it was a Benjamin Moore color.

Since this was one of the few projects we were not going to DIY, we hired a small local painting company (after getting three different quotes) and got on their schedule for June 11. Well, they called me up on May 20 and said a client had cancelled so they could actually start on our house the next day. Yikes! I felt a little un-prepared but couldn't turn down the chance to have the house done even sooner.