Staircase Make-over

I have been in a wild and crazy decorating mood for the past few months. I get these spurts of energy..... or creativity..... or desire.....I'm not really sure what to call them. But every now and then I just need a little change and then I'm satisfied with the status quo for a bit longer.

I am also a Pinterest fanatic and I found some inspirational pics there for my next project. Something to fill the blank wall going up my stairs. 

I think you can see where I am going with this. I showed my husband the pictures and he really liked the idea of the judge's paneling on the wall too (in the first two pics) so we each had a part on this project. After looking at lots of pictures I decided that I wanted to use all black frames with white, black or no matting and do all of my pictures in black and white. 

I started collecting frames of different sizes and shapes while my husband went to work on the wall. I couldn't do my project until he finished his. His part came out great!!! Now it was my turn to add the frames and complete the wall.

When it was time to hang the frames I used this method, which I saw on several blogs and Pinterest posts. It worked great!

The only problem with my end of this project is that I don't have pictures in the frames yet! I keep saying that I need to get on my daughters' computers and download a bunch of pics of the grandkids that they have taken.  But there just doesn't ever seem to be a good time to do it! I really want this finished before I decorate for Christmas-so I guess that just gives me a few weeks! I need to get busy!!

Here is my semi-finished project..a wall of frames and only one picture!! Can you spot the real photo?

And this is how the whole wall looks now. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out that it was pretty plain along this wall before we did all this work. A little eye candy goes a long way.

Edit:

My friend Hope sent me a picture that she took when she was visiting earlier this year. She said it's my before picture, so I had to share with you.