It's been just over ten years now since I started actively operating Picture Hanging Solutions. The anniversary passed un-celebrated and un-noticed at the time. It was only a few days ago the realisation dawned and my first reaction was quite a normal one; my how time flies.

But then, as I began to think about it, I came to the conclusion that however belated it might be, there was much to be acknowledged and much for me to be very grateful for as we have come a very long way.

This picture hanging business we work in is, and probably will forever be a rather niche profession. It is so niche in fact we don't even have own our own business category. For example in the old Yellow Pages book, and the Sensis on-line that replaced it, we always get lumped in with picture framers (quite a different profession) and in any government questionnaire or employment category we always end up in the 'Other Professions' section.

I must confess that when I first thought about starting a business to hang pictures I really saw its potential as being no more than a niche part of my working life, a part-time job to help keep the wolf from the door whilst trying to run an art gallery in what was turning out to be a very difficult location in Docklands (it seemed like a good idea at the time!).

My first toe in the picture hanging water was also in Docklands. Some of those customers who had purchased paintings from my gallery would not only get me to hang those but would also ask me to hang their other pictures as well. I also placed a small picture hanging advert in the local Docklands newsletter (the area was not yet big enough for its own local paper) and slowly I started picking up small hanging jobs in the various precinct apartment and office buildings.

Eventually my partner's son Matthew built our first website and slowly we started gathering enquiries and getting more installation jobs. Very early on I remember getting really excited when I managed to get a large private home job in Prahran that involved hanging over 200 pictures! It was the first time I was challenged with sorting, positioning and grouping such a large number of pictures in the one place all at the same time. Of course back then I was working on my own and still honing my skills so everything took much longer than it would today - I think I ended up spending nearly a week hanging all the pictures on that job, but I remember to this day how thrilled my clients were with the end result (Mick and Simon's email is still proudly displayed in our website Testimonial page).

As time rolled along, I became busier and eventually I decided to employ an assistant. Young Will joined me and for the next two years, with his help, the business continued to grow. We began to gather a loyal group of clients who would book us to hang their pictures, often multiple times. Sometimes our return visits were to hang new acquisitions, on other occasions we were returning to the same client but in a different home. I actually have one client who has moved four times in the past ten years and each time we get the phone call to come and hang them again! Many of our previous clients would refer us to other family members or their friends and some of the networks of referrals became quite large. One young lady rang me up one day asking if we could come and hang her mirror and when I asked her where she found out about our service she said her parents had all their picture hung by us, as had her older sister, her grandparents and even the neighbours of their grandparents (in a retirement facility).

Then there was the street in Kew where we went to hang one picture in a home, but as we were going back to our van their neighbour asked for a card and had us back a week later to hang all their pictures. They must have been a social lot in that street because word got around and we ended up hanging pictures in six of the homes in what was a rather small street! As more time passed we employed Mark and my son Daniel and as I had previously done with Will, I spent a great deal of time and teaching them both the fine art of positioning, grouping and correctly hanging pictures. I am obviously very proud of my son Daniel because he has now reached a level of proficiency where I have not only appointed him my lead installer, but his ability in complex design work (groups of pictures often referred to as Salon or Paris hanging) is second to none. My partner Sue also became my business administrator (or as I jokingly refer to her 'The Hand of the King') and her son Matthew was more formally given the position of our official IT consultant. Keith recently joined us as a part-time installer and after Mark left, we employed Gary to join our happy team. Above all I believe I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have great people work for me and with me, and without them we could not have had the success we have had.

I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge all our wonderful clients, over the course of ten years, more than three thousand of them! We are very fortunate that the work we do generally engenders a happy, even excited response from those we do work for. We have always said in our marketing that "we turn your house into a home" and whilst it might be a snappy catchphrase, it is also the truth. Every day we walk into houses that have often just been moved into and we are immediately confronted with bare, lifeless walls. Pictures and mirrors will often be stacked forlornly on the ground, sometimes sitting on the floor in roughly the position to hang, on other times stacked in uneven piles, waiting judgment on their suitability to hang (or sometimes even if there might be a place for them to be hung).

However generally by the time we leave, each precious artwork, print, framed photograph, piece of memorabilia and mirror has been carefully positioned and hung in exactly the right position to bring warmth, colour, perspective and life to each room. So many of our clients, unprompted will say to us, "now it feels like our home". That is what correctly hung pictures can do, and that is why we have a great many very happy and loyal clients, and for that we are eternally grateful.

So as I noted at the beginning of this blog entry, the last ten years does seem to have flown by. And remembering back to when I first started Picture Hanging Solutions, I swore that I wasn't going to do this job unless it was work that would make me happy. So I guess maybe the real answer as to why the past ten years has passed in a blur is the old saying , 'time flies when you're having fun'!

I often get phone calls from potential clients asking if I would be able to install a hanging system in their home.My typical answer is “yes I can”, but I always add a further question, “but are you sure that type of product is what you need?” Gallery-style hanging or tracking systems were originally designed specifically for art galleries so that art could be changed over on a very regular basis without the need to constantly be drilling or hammering new hooks into the walls. There are several manufacturers and designs but they all follow more or less the same basic principles. For those unfamiliar with the product, these systems consist of a single two or three metre rail mounted horizontally high on a wall (usually just below the cornice or ceiling-joint). These rails (or tracks as they are usually called) can be joined together and cut to length and then screwed into place to cover the full width of any conventional plaster or solid brick wall. The tracks have a grooved slot on the underside that allows for hanging wires to be inserted and slid along the length of the railing to be best positioned where the pictures are to be hung. The wire drops vertically down and a special adjustable / lockable hook slides up and down the wire so that you are able to hang your picture or pictures exactly where you want; but then if you change your mind, you can easily re-adjust the hook (vertically) or the wire (horizontally) to further re-position the picture to suit. It is, in short, a brilliant design that no professional art gallery can operate without. So if it is so good for art galleries, then why shouldn’t you have one installed in your home to hang your own pictures and paintings? Typically I answer that question with; “how often do you intend to re-position or re-hang your pictures?” Sometimes the answer is; “quite a lot, I’ve always got pictures coming and going and we like to change things over.” In this scenario, gallery-type hanging is ideal. But in the vast majority of instances the answer is “not very much at all; once they are hung they’ll pretty much stay there”. If that is the answer then I generally would not recommend a gallery-type installation. For a start, supplying and installing the gallery tracking, together with the supply of sufficient drop wires and adjustable hooks is a significant expense. After installation, most clients still want me to hang the pictures as well (although I am always happy to teach the new owners to do it themselves if they wish) which adds further to the cost. The bottom line is - it will typically cost you about twice as much to hang pictures with gallery tracking as it would to hang pictures with conventional hooks into the wall. The other advantage with conventional hook-hanging is that you don’t see any hanging devices. There are no visible rails or suspension wires, only the pictures, hung as they should be. However some people do like the modern ‘gallery-look’ of the hanging system, and that is another valid reason for going with the tracking method. The other weakness of a gallery type system is if you wish to hang pictures in a tight grouping with varying size frames hung above and below one another, such as in a family photo wall. If you try and hang such a layout with gallery tracking it ends up being a ‘dogs-breakfast’ of wires going everywhere and it is very difficult to get the pictures hanging neatly. Where clients are installing a gallery system I usually recommend that if they are hanging a group of images we don’t use tracking in that area and hang conventionally with hooks. My main recommendation then is not to rush in to purchase a gallery-type installation until you have made a valued judgment as to whether it will best suit your personal requirements. And finally, just to make it clear I do not have a vested interest in my view, I actually make more profit installing a hanging system than hanging conventionally with nail-in or screw-in hooks. I just want to make sure you get the most appropriate and best value for money picture hanging result for your home, both in the way it works, and the way it looks.

Is hanging pictures a trade (as in a carpenter, plumber or handyman)? Well yes, but only in part. You might say that professionally hanging pictures is 40% a trade and 60% an art. I concede that there is nothing particularly complicated about hanging a picture on a wall; hook gets nailed in and you hang the picture, right? But beyond this basic action there are many variables. Is the picture hung at the right height (too high or too low), what is the aspect of the image, horizontal or vertical and does that aspect work on the wall where it is to be hung? Is the picture too big, or indeed big enough, for the chosen wall? Is it a print or painting under glass and will that glass be too reflective if it is situated directly across from a window? What if there are other pictures to be hung nearby; will they look good together or will some element (style, framing type, colours, aspect etc.) clash? What about the furniture below or adjacent to the pictures to be hung? Will they complement one another or be some sort of visual distraction? On many occasions when I visit a client’s home someone has ‘had a go’ at hanging some pictures. Usually it is a well meaning partner or husband (who usually never wanted the responsibility of doing it in the first place!). On one recent occasion I took a picture down to re-position it, only to find about a dozen other nail holes all around the hook where the poor bugger had kept trying to get it just right, but of course never really being sure that he had. Ah, and then there are those who say “we decided to hang our pictures there because that’s where the last people who lived here had the hooks”… oh dear. Most probably the people who lived there last also had hung their pictures in the wrong place (hanging too high is the most common mistake) and now the new owners are taking that persons problem and making it theirs. Here’s a hot tip. Unless you are hanging something above a tall fireplace mantle or high piece of furniture, you should never have to look up at your pictures or mirrors. You need to be looking into them. Think of it this way. If an artist is creating a painting, he doesn’t set his easel up so high that he can barely touch the top of the painting. Nor does he set it so low that he’d have to bend down to see and work on the centre of the painting. If you hold a picture up on a wall, think of yourself as the artist (regardless of whether it is a painting, print or photograph, the principle is the same). How high would you situate it if you were creating that image? Well that is, more or less, the height at which that picture needs to be hung. Are there any exceptions to that rule? Well, yes there are but that is what an art hanging professional can assist you with. At the end of the day, it is all about creating a sense of harmony. Paintings, prints, framed family photos, mirrors and even wall sculpture add dimension and balance to a room and (as I often say) transform your house into a home. The pictures that we hang on the walls of our home and office environments are so often a reflection of ourselves. They reflect the things we love, the places we have been, the people we care about, our interests and our passions. Without correctly hanging those pictures, our living or working environments lack completion; lack ourselves. I recently visited a spectacular multi-million dollar home in outer Melbourne where the client had obviously spent a considerable amount of money decorating. And yet despite the quality of the home, the furniture and furnishings, until we hung her paintings, mirrors and family photos, the place looked like a very expensive display home where nobody lived. I hadn’t said anything about this to the client concerned but upon completion and over a cup of tea, the charming lady confided in me that she had recently spent many, many thousands of dollars on furniture and soft furnishings but my much smaller fee ($650 as I recall) had made more of a difference than everything else combined. I asked her what the difference felt like. She answered simply that she now felt like she was home.

My New Year’s Resolution this year was to update my Blog at least once a month, so here we are on the 13th of March with this year’s first update which underlines just how silly it is to make NYE resolutions you’re not going to keep. Putting that moment of self-flagellation clearly behind me, I thought it might be interesting to talk about the pictures that people put on their walls. Not so much this time about particular jobs I have done, but more about the story of why people buy, collect and hang the pictures they do. Across the years of my work I have hung literally thousands of images for clients including paintings, prints, photography, memorabilia, rugs and tapestries, awards and certificates, mirrors, wall-sculpture, various collectables such as number plates, swords and woodcarvings and even musical instruments. The one commonality among all of these things was their owners’ desire to have them correctly displayed on the walls of their homes and / or workplaces. Typically, people want to hang these pieces on their walls because, at some level, they mean something to them. And for every person I meet in my work that ‘meaning’ will be something different. There are however, broad categories of people who generally have similar collected images to hang. Typically for young families there are often lots of framed family photos, especially of weddings, honeymoon snaps and their young children, the latter, often professionally shot. Wedding photos aside, there is often a romantic edge to younger couples’ images. I recently hung an unusual framed poster print above a bed-head for some newlyweds. It seemed a bit incongruous to me as to why they wanted it there; it would have looked better hung in the nearby passageway. But when I suggested that, the young lady asked me to have a look at the back of the poster and there, written carefully in flowing script read a long and detailed poem of love, that her then boyfriend (now husband) had penned for her. Of course it had to hang over their marital bed; what was I thinking! Art collectors and their collections are sometimes, but not always, what you might expect. Some do formally display their favourite artworks in almost art-gallery type settings, with professionally installed gallery hanging systems and high quality art lighting throughout their homes. But other collectors often overwhelm their walls with art, filling practically every square inch of white wall with artworks. And then when they run out of wall-space they begin stacking them up on the floor, in storage areas and under beds. One collector I visited some time ago had so many paintings (I roughly tallied up about 250!) he had just decided to build a rear extension and a second storey extension to his already large home, specifically to house his ever growing collection. Even then, he confided to me, he still wouldn’t have enough room for it all. Then there are the car enthusiasts wanting motor racing and motoring memorabilia hung. More often than not, ‘Mrs. Car Enthusiast’ has laid down the law with instructions that “all that car-stuff” can only go up in the garage. But let me tell you that I have hung pictures and memorabilia in garages that are larger and more pristine than a great many homes. One such car enthusiast had approximately 150 personalized number-plates that he wanted professionally hung in his garage (imagine if you will, black walls and black and white chequered-flag-carpeted floor in a garage!). Another had motor racing posters representing some of the World’s most exotic racing cars; of which a great many of the cars in the posters, were actually sitting right there in the garage! Wealthy collectors aside though, for most of us the pictures we hang often hold special meaning. I hear it all the time; “We got that on our first trip overseas; my elderly father painted that for me just before he passed away; that was the first picture we bought together as a couple; that’s my very favourite photo of my mum; my son painted that for me in second grade; my husband bought that for me as a special surprise for my 40th birthday. For every picture that we love, there is a story, and we love our pictures because of those stories, and the meaning they bring. I have on several occasions hung pictures in retirement villages. I especially enjoy these jobs as I see, through the pictures I am hanging, the stories of these elderly peoples’ long and often fruitful lives. Photos of themselves as children, together with those of their children and grandchildren; a painting they bought on the streets of Paris in the 1960’s, the antique blue and white Chinese plates that they found in the attic of a house they bought in the 1970’s, the framed ‘Award of Excellence’ her husband received from the company he worked for for 30 years. You see, most of the things we acquire in our lives such as furniture, furnishings, clothes, electrical goods, decorative pieces and everyday cars are disposable. Often, even the homes we live in get unemotionally sold and replaced several times over as we journey through life. For these things, the high-point of enjoyment is usually when we buy them. From that point on, they gradually get damaged, break down, wear out or get substituted, often many times over in a lifetime. However the pictures we acquire, often will travel with us throughout our lives. It is true that some may fall by the wayside but the ones that give us real meaning and engender pleasant memories, we keep through good times and bad. Bushfire victims often say that the last thing they grab before fleeing the flames are their pictures and their family photos. Divorces are often heading for amicable settlements; that is until the family pictures come up for negotiation. Our pictures reflect our interests, passions, professions, lifestyle, personality traits, and often, how long we have been alive for. In essence I believe that what we hang on our walls is so often, who we are. To emphasize just how real I believe this proposition to be, let me relate a story. Some time ago I was enlisted by a prominent interior designer to hang a number of high quality pictures and mirrors throughout a multi-million dollar city apartment. Apparently the designer had been commissioned to carry out a complete furnishing of the apartment on behalf of an overseas owner, with no personal input from that owner, other than an overall brief of high quality and coordinated décor including the selection of images and mirrors for the walls. I spent the better part of a day hanging all the pieces which included several spectacular gilded mirrors and a large variety of classically framed European prints. Some were hung singly above fire-places and cabinetry, others in grouped sets on open walls. I even hung 2 large silver gilt framed bed-heads, ready for the beds to be pushed against. The quality of the furnishings, printed artworks included, was of the very highest order, and yet the final result was a home that looked like an elaborately-furnished display home. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it actually looked like a truly spectacular mausoleum, in other words, it looked like a place where nobody lived. I believe that despite the designers’ best intentions and excellent decorative choices, none of the pictures on the wall reflected the personality of anyone living there (and to be fair, at that stage, nobody was). Each image had been carefully chosen to coordinate within the overall high-end decorative ‘look’ of the project and in that respect the designer had done an outstanding job. However the key element that was missing, that which was, in my opinion, the most important element of all; was human personality. If you for a moment doubt this proposition, I advise you now to look up from your computer screen and look around the room you are in. Then walk around your home, look at the walls and what you have hung on those walls. What do you see reflected back? Do you see your personality or that of your partners, do you see elements of your interests, your family, your history, do you see the things that make you feel good? For those that see these things, you will know exactly what I am talking about. For those that don’t (what do you mean, you have NOTHING on your walls?), then perhaps it is time to start thinking about what you would love to look at when you walk down the hallway after a hard day at work? About 12 months ago I hung a rather eclectic collection of family and friends photos and kids drawings in the garage of a prominent Melbourne businessman. It seemed an unusual brief at the time and so when I returned about six months later to hang a mirror in his house I curiously asked him if he was enjoying his garage pictures. He said to me, “you know Russell, sometimes I arrive home after a s*@t of a day at work but whenever I pull up into the garage and stare up at those pictures of my family and friends, I instantly feel better”.

Recently I did a job in one of Melbourne's finest suburbs for a lady whom I will call, for the sake of this story, June. Moving from a very large family home into a very large (but smaller) apartment inevitably means a re-assessment of what to keep and what not to. But June's much loved art collection was never going to be high up on her down-sizing priority list. Consequently, when I was called in it was a case of too many pictures and not nearly enough walls to hang them on. So after carefully populating every available apartment wall with her very favourite paintings, etchings and engravings, we then set about hanging more pictures in her entrance foyer. Now technically this was a public access area, but this tenacious lady had managed to get Body Corporate approval. We even continued hanging down into the stairwell until at last it seemed like we were done. But then June discovered, in an unopened box, a stunning set of framed antique Chinese woodblocks prints. They had to be hung; but where to put them? There was seemingly nowhere left. June then suggested "well, we'll just have to hang them in the basement car park!” Well it wasn't exactly the car park but rather the lift entrance foyer of the car park; and there was a good sized gently curving wall that might just do the trick. But then another dilemma; I discovered there were only 11 images from an original set of 12 - 4 horizontal (landscape) aspect and 7 vertical (portrait). To attempt to hang them in anything other than a random layout seemed impossible, but the style of these images cried out for them to be hung into a conformed and if possible, symmetrical shape. As with any matching set of images I kept moving them around trying to find a balance and discernable shape like some sort of oversize Rubik’s Cube. Finally I had one of those 'ahaah' moments. Photographed below is the design I settled on; somehow, it just seemed to work. June was thrilled and even her bemused neighbors ("she's hung pictures where?") were impressed. I was just relieved because, I have to tell you, I used to hate Rubik’s Cubes.

Well, as best as I can tell it is anyway. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but apart from various hanging handyman hints and several obscure references to hanging pictures from within other blogs, no-one yet has focussed specific attention on the subject. Now I am the first to admit, hanging pictures is not exactly brain surgery but I never cease to be amazed how many intelligent, multi-skilled people are totally confronted and stopped by the idea of trying to hang a picture, or worse still, a series or group of pictures. So herein, I hope to share, with anyone out there who may be interested, my 'wall-stories'. My intention is to keep the stories, light, short, and hopefully amusing. For any of my clients who might read this you need fear not; no names, no pack-drill as they say. The stories will be factual but names, times and locations will be changed to protect the innocent. I'd love to get a bit of feedback. If you have a good 'hanging' story to tell let me know. Whilst trying to keep everything in a positive vein, criticism of a constructive nature will be welcomed, slagging off will not. So let us begin.