BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Budget Decor decorating with family photos

Since I have painted (and my house is close to being declared a national disaster lol) I have taken all the photos off my walls and have a big stack of them. Most of them came from the room where I had the mold problem and since I didn't care about too many holes in the wall (as I have plans to redo this room anyway but the mold accelerated the project) I had a ton of photos on the walls. Some of them are older, our first family photo and my kids all got together with their children and had a photo made for me for Christmas...yatta yatta. Anyway, I really hate to put all those nail holes back in the walls. I was just wondering how everyone displays their photos? I do have a stairwell that I have considered hanging photos in but don't think I have room for all of these! I have several old portraits with the beveled glass frames and already planned to put these in the stairwell hall once I get done painting in there. These date from the late 1800s and when my mil moved she didn't want these (and barely knew who any of these people were) and so I took them and salvaged the ones that I could. They were in horrible condition and my framer fixed 4 of them for me. So I wanted to put them somewhere that the sun wouldn't shine in so that they were more protected. I was thinking one side of the stairwell for old family photos and the other for new ones.

Hi Connie,
I'm glad you discovered the mold before your photos got damaged!

I really love photos going up a stairwell. I especially like your idea of using one staircase for older pics and the other for newer ones.

I think when we have a lot of photos, it is really interesting to make a "gallery" of them for everyone to see. A stairwell, foyer, hallway or one wall in a room is a nice place to do this.

To keep the look more unified, try keeping the frames and background matting the same or very similar color and style. Like black frames and white matting or wooden frames and an antique white/cream matting. This keeps the attention on the individual photos and your eye doesn't get distracted by assorted frames in varying colors and shapes.

Another idea is to keep black & white photos grouped together and group your colored photos elsewhere. The more unified the look, the more the photos will stand out by themselves.

Donna

I LOVE old pictures. If I were you, I would scan them and save them to a CD so if something happens to them, you can print them up, its awful to loose family history.

I don't have any stairs in my house but I do have a hallway where I hang pictures like this, I have them all in matching gold frames. Most of them are my daughters school pictures.

I am also scanning these school pictures just in case as well.

Hey Ladies...I finished painting my stairwell yesterday so if the siders ever leave (I am beginning to think they are here for the long haul lol) I will get busy hanging. Most of the photos are framed in black frames, I was careful to buy all black frames when shopping because I had a wall full of photos and I thought the all black frames looked good.

Lisa, unfortuately the photos are the ones that go in the oval beveled picture frames and so the photos are not flat. I do think my mil has a few of them in a smaller size, she came Sunday and couldn't tell me who all of them were and was going to try to figure that out so that I could put names on the back of the picture frames. I have learned after doing a lot of family research that putting dates and names on back of photos is important!

Connie

Hi Connie,
How's it going with the photo hanging? Did you get them all where you wanted?

Donna

I did get the pictures all hung last week because my sister was coming for a visit. She really did like it. Hubby asked if I hung enough. I told him no, just my favorites! On the long wall I started with a big photo I have that has a baby photo of my husband and I in the middle and on the top there are 4 photos, 1 is a newborn and the other about 9 months of each of our kids. On the bottom is space for 4 other photos. Then I did an old family photo (with all the kids) and then I picked a few inbetween and ended with photos of my grandchildren. The hall is very narrow and so taking a photo of it pretty much a waste. But I really thought it turned out nice.

It sounds nice, Connie. I'm glad your sister liked everything. It must have been fun to give her a tour of all your recent changes. Had she seen your house before?

Donna

I was talking to a photographer the other day who uses Photoshop alot, he says you can take color pictures and turn them into black and white or into sepia rather easily with photoshop. This would make an interesting arrangement of pictures that looked old fashioned. OR maybe make some newer pictures blend in better with some old ones.

I have also wanted to do some pictures of my daughter like Andy Warhol did of Marilyn Monroe...its the same picture repeated in a block but with wild bright colors. Anna Nicole Smith had some done like this as well, I thought they looked fun and modern, perfect for my daughters room. The same thing could be applied to fabric if you wanted to or use a favorite pets face rather then a person.

BellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

Donna, yes she had been here 3 years ago. We hadn't done much of anything at that time so there was a lot of change. Sunday after breakfast we were all laying around in the living room and she said my house was so relaxing...all she wanted to do was just lay there and visit. I took that as a great complement!

Lisa, I have seen dog photos done like that and they were very cute. That would be so cute done with your daughters photo. I do have a few photos in the stairwell that I did change to black and white. One was of my grampa standing outside in a pasture looking at the cattle. My mom had taken that photo and I found it while looking through a box of family memorabilia that I had borrowed from my mom. I was looking for genealogical info. Anyway, I had changed it to black and white and gave my gramma a 5x7 that I had matted and framed and everyone liked it so much that I had to make copies for everyone.

Conniem--Do you know if someone in your area restores old photos or can replicate them? We have some old photos of my husband's grandparents. The pictures were in pretty good shape, but the old frames were not. We had a restorer work on them, and they look so nice now. The same restorer had a reputation for restoring old photos. With a little research, I bet you could find someone like that.