A Twist on Picture Ledges

Well the carpet guy is finishing up the basement bedroom carpet as I speak!  The kids had an early morning Slap Fest 2011, Aubrie lost with a bloody nose!  The carpet guy witnessed it all - so embarrassing!  It's been an interesting morning thus far, considering I was up from 3-4 with a great need to watch Grey's Anatomy!

Today after lunch, Maggie & Kylie move in.  I am very excited and I really think it will be a great arrangement for us all!  To prepare for their arrival, I had a small project for Jade. 

We had a big picture wall right by our entry way.  It was filled with pictures of my kids as they have grown up.  Since we have such an open floor plan, it was very visible throughout the house.  It was nice, but I hung all the pictures touching so they wouldn't go crooked all the time & it's nearly impossible to change out a picture.  Besides that, how can we have a massive picture wall without any photos of Caroline JoAnn?  She's going to be living here too!  So I brainstormed with Mom - what could we do???  We thought about tree branches with pictures hanging off of them, old boards to mimic Pottery Barns frame shelves, and metal piping.  A normal frame ledge just doesn't seem like me, and they were $30+.  So Jade & I went shopping.

Jade is a genius.  At Menards we scoured the pipes trying to figure out something to work.  I kept thinking of small piping to hang the pictures from.  That's when he came up with the idea to use 2" pipes as a picture ledge instead.  I LOVED the idea, because anything metal and I'm sold.

(yes I know the one picture of Everett is sideways, but I'm going to switch it out with one of Caroline when the box arrives this afternoon)

We found brackets to screw the pipes to the wall.  Then pipe caps that screwed down & made it even more interesting, but also protected everyone from sharp edges.  These were originally 10' long 2" pipes that Jade cut down into 3', 4', and 6' lengths.

The end  result is PERFECT and very much me!  The pictures sit on the ledge & with some velcro backing they are guaranteed not to fall off the ledge just in case.  I can also easily switch out pictures as the kids grow!

Now, all I need are some pictures of Caroline & Ollie to add to the wall and it's complete!

Overall the project probably cost us maybe $60 & I have 13' of picture ledges now!