Our dining room has two feature walls with a paneling we installed and painted behr “midnight blue.” For the opposite side of the room I wanted to add a dramatic and maximalist art wall. It came together really easily and everything I used you can get yourself. (All of the art in total was 50 cents thanks to a used book sale.) So yes, first I found a thrifted book of John James Audubon artwork. Thrifted art books are always one of my favorite places to get inexpensive prints. This book was particularly a good one because it had large full page images. And lots of them.
I am not sure if this is the EXACT same one but a similar one is inexpensively here on amazon.
Next I sourced a good frame I liked that I could buy in bulk mass produced, but still with classic lines and little bit of old style character.
These at michaels! Like always on sale 50% off, and so only $18 each.
The prints had a slight variety of sizes from how they were printed in the book. To avoid paying for custom matting I just put an 11×14 piece of solid matting behind the print in the frame. I got solid pieces of 11×14 mats (with no hole) by going to hobby lobby. They have really big sheets that you can buy for $10 and then they cut it down into pieces of whatever size you’d like.
I deliberated how big I wanted the wall to be (15 frames or 21) and settled on 21 with a 3 x 4 grid on the left side and a 3×3 on the right. It cost some extra cash, but I thought the additional fullness would achieve the collected, maximalist look better.
On a large scale art wall like this, all the frames being level is important, so after leveling everything out, David secured each frame on the back with a small piece of adhesive putty. Especially the ones by the high chair!
Our dining room has gone through several iterations, but the way things are lately is our favorite and we find ourselves spending so much more time in here. Adequate lighting being the possible biggest mvp!
