Pictures on the Wall

There is a stairway going to our second floor that has a wall along one side of it. The wall needs repainting. Before we had our new roof installed, moisture must have gotten behind the plaster and blistered some of the paint in one spot. I fixed that and put a primer coat of paint on it and now must gather the courage to do a little more patching of some minor cracks way high up on the wall. The wall is hung with many pictures, some painted by my father, some acquired during various travels, one painted by Anne and one photo contributed by our son, Leo.

At one point, these pictures were arranged in a beautiful symmetrical arrangement, the likes of which has rarely been seen. However, over the past few years, a couple of pictures have taken to fall right off the wall and several new pictures were acquired that needed to be squeezed in. It is sad to say that the arrangement has lost some of it beauty and symmetry. So, in anticipation of painting the aforesaid wall, I wanted to arrange the pictures, once again as a beautiful array and patch the excess picture hanging holes. (Making holes in plaster is not quite as neat as making holes in sheet rock.) The rooms on our second floor all have picture rails going around the perimeter of the room from which pictures are hung by wires from hooks that slide on the rail, thus eliminating the necessity to poke a hole in the plaster. Apparently, these rails were on the first floor at one time but were removed long ago. We tackled this today after I returned from lunch with two associates of my former employer. I can only say that arranging pictures along a stairway while trying to keep the viewing height consistent and the display pleasing with pictures of various sizes is challenging. Some people seem to have a knack for decorating and can make their homes beautiful without effort. I am not one of those people. My creative abilities must lie elsewhere. I only hope that I am able to find where they lie before it is too late to do anything about them. After a couple of hours of resetting painting and pictures in frames, cleaning glass, etc. and trying to arrange the pictures on the wall, we decided to try again another day, which better be tomorrow if we don't want the place to look like a wreck for New Year's Day. I will report further on progress after there is some.