The Trouble with Blank Walls

So…blank walls are kind of exciting.  They are a fresh start, a space of possibilities, a blank canvas if you will.

But they are also kind of overwhelming.  What to fill them with?  What proportions will look good?  Do I even like this art?  Does leaving it blank highlight or diminish the greasy little fingerprints over the bottom 1/3 of it?  : ) It is especially overwhelming if it is a big blank wall…at least for me. 

I also struggle with indecision between a few different looks I like.  Should I do this gallery wall, or those big prints, or maybe a piece of furniture here?  I have perfectionist tendencies so it’s hard to battle those and just go for something. 

(You don’t want to be locked in my brain.  It is a battleground of decorating choices, with depression glass missiles and frames tossed about like catapults.  Yikes.)

I was/am facing this in our kitchen/dining area.  It is one big room with one prominent big blank wall.  I filled part of that wall with the coffee and tea station that I go on about ad nauseum.  ; )  But since it was such a large wall there was a part to the left that looked pretty neglected next to it’s showy neighbor. 

See?

(That darker spot on the wall is just a shadow from a chair…FYI.  And…the coffee/tea area only takes up half the wall, not most of the wall the way it looks here)

Of course, there are other walls in the house that pose problems.  One of them was the wall behind our TV that I posted about (and kind of solved) here.  Since we moved last June I haven’t actually done much decorating on our walls besides these two locations.  There are a lot of blank walls to fill here!  Slowly but surely I’ll get to most of them…though I don’t necessarily think every wall needs to have something on it. 

Back to this particular wall.  In case it is hard to picture the layout of the room, here is a picture of the kitchen area from before we moved:

The big wall to the right is the wall I’m currently trying to figure out.  I started doing some more on it, then I realized that I didn’t get enough shelf brackets when I was last at Ikea…bummer!!  It will have to wait until I can get there again.  I am hoping I can go tomorrow (and I really would LOVE to go as it is always a fun outing for the kids and I, especially so with the winter we’ve been having) but it is supposed to snow again so we’ll see if the drive is a good idea.  There are a few other things I want to check out at Ikea so I’ve been looking for an excuse to go there again for a while.  : )  If I do go I’ll be showing you that project (including a fun poster I found!) sometime next week (as always around here, fingers crossed!).

So…do blank walls overwhelm you too?  Tell me I’m not the only one!