Goodbye, Klimt

Continuing my recent run of finishing up projects that have long been on the to-do list, I recently got around to hanging up some art that I had been debating about for several months.  I used to have this big Klimt print hanging up over the cabinet that I keep my dishes in.

I still love the print, but it just got to be time to take it down.  Around the same time, my grandma died, leaving behind a lot of great art.  I don't know anything about art, but I love just about everything she and my grandpa had collected over the years.  It's all very fun, but stylish and elegant.  Given the chance to claim some of the pretty pictures for myself, here's what I chose:

And here they are together.  I thought they could all be hung up together because of their similar frames, and I liked the contrast between the black and white line drawing and the two more colorful, abstract ones.

They sat here like this, kind of just collecting dust, for the past few months while I debated whether I really did want to hang them all up together, or if I wanted to reframe them or what.  The frames made me pause a bit because they're so...well, GOLD...and I didn't want it to look too old-fashioned.  But I ended up deciding that not only was it too expensive to reframe them all, but I kind of liked the gold being so different from everything else in the house.  So at least for now, they're staying just the way I got them.   

I decided this was a good time to experiment with a picture-hanging technique I had seen on the interwebs, when you're hanging up a group of pieces together.  I found a piece of leftover wrapping paper, turned it over, and spread it on the ground.  I measured it to the maximum size that I wanted the paintings to fit into, and then laid the paintings onto it and moved them around a bit to find an arrangement that I liked.

After settling on the arrangement I wanted, I traced the outline of the pictures onto the paper.  I also measured where the nails would go and marked those spots on the paper.

I then taped the paper to the wall, making sure it was centered and level and all that good stuff.  And then I just nailed right through it in the spots I had previously marked, then tore the paper away. 

And voila!  I hung up the pictures and it turned out pretty good.

Here's a wider shot of the room and how it looks in relation to the other stuff on that wall.

And now going the other direction...  For some reason when you look at it this way, it just makes the entire room feel about 3 feet taller than it did before.  I think I hung the pictures a little higher than I usually would, which - it turns out - I quite like!

Glad to check this one off the list.