Picture Moulding

Our first multi-day do-it-yourself project! I don't know whether Daniel and I were inspired by the Galveston historic homes with tall ceilings or what, but we have been wanting picture moulding for the living room almost since we moved in.

Picture moulding is sort of like chair rail, but it goes up closer to the ceiling and is shaped to accommodate hooks, from which art hangs by ribbon or wire. Here's the basic idea:
We found the picture moulding (harder than it sounds!) at Wilson Door and Trim in Garland. Here's the profile of it:
We brought it home:
And painted it white, to match the crown moulding already in the living room:
Daniel used this awesome miter saw, borrowed from my brother-in-law:

And he practiced cutting perfect corners:
And then once the moulding was cut to the correct lengths, we used a wall-mounted laser level to mark where the moulding would go:
We bought a compressed air brad nailer to help with this project, and boy did it make the job easier! With this cool tool, you just push the nailer into the wall, and a nail shoots out of it. It looks like this:
We took turns nailing sections to the wall:
And we got it all up pretty quickly:
So then it was just a matter of hanging the photos and art! We bought frames and red mats from Michael's and framed several pictures from our first few years of marriage. We used gray ribbon, also from Michael's, and used those to hang the photos from the hooks we found at the House of Antique Hardware.

The finished look:

And finished just in time for birthday party hosting! I turned 25 the other day--thanks to my SIL for the below picture... I totally swiped it from her blog :).