The Liam shrine

When we started pulling Liam’s new room together before Christmas, we also turned our attention to a few other areas of home improvement that had been overlooked for far too long. One of those was our upstairs hallway. We used to have a collage of travel photos hanging on the wall, but I had taken those down and built a couple of gallery ledges to put up in their place. Then I couldn’t figure out how to mount the ledges to the wall, since the ledges are straight and it turns out that our old-house-wall is not. After months of having nothing but holes in the plaster to look at, Chad finally took matters into his own hands, made a trip to the hardware store and rigged up the shelves as you see them today.

Although we have random photos scattered around the house – family stuff in the living room, our travel photos relocated to the rec room etc. – these are probably my very favourite photos of all. And it’s probably no surprise that Liam plays a significant role in each one. There is one of our wedding photos, and one of my nephew, Henry. There is one frame for which I just had a mat cut, that needs a new photo in it; the old photo you can see peeking out from behind is a collage of Liam that used to be on Chad’s desk at work. Everything else is Liam front and centre.

Of course, in a couple of months time, I will have to replace exactly half of the Liam photos around the house with pics of Little Miss in order to avoid the second child syndrome that Megan keeps telling me she suffered. The problem is, I love all these photos. I love the ledges exactly as they are. I would be sad and hard pressed to decide to take any of them down.

I just had a more recent photo of Henry printed, one that includes his parents, but I’m not sure I really want to take down the one that’s already there. I don’t know what I’ll do when I capture a new favourite of Liam, because I am out of space (at least, nearly; and I have to save that one frame for Little Miss, I have to). Before Christmas I thought I might do a mixed media shelf, have some photos on display along with a few Christmas ornaments or other seasonal items. It never happened. The photos won out; I couldn’t put any of them away, even temporarily.

It doesn’t help matters any that Chad hates the look of a wall covered in picture frames. I often don’t like the way it looks either, but it’s different when they are my photos of my family. If I had free license to never take anything down but just keep expanding… maybe that would make it easier… I just don’t think that will be the case. Sooner or later, something will have to go. I will fight it kicking and screaming the entire way.

Oh yeah, and a PS to the potential next tenants of our house after we are gone: I will leave the ledges behind for you. For one thing, they are custom made to neatly fit exactly along this wall. And for another thing, I never did get around to filling and touching up all the holes on the wall from the collage that used to hang there. You’ll need some stuff on the ledges to cover them up. It’s working out well for me.