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While sprucing up our place earlier this year, we decided the wall above our mantle could use some art. Rather than pony up for frames, artwork, or blown up photographs, I decided to take advantage of the cheap albums in the dollar bin of my local record store to add beautiful artwork to my living room. With just a few bucks and about 30 minutes, I built an album art wall to display some of my favorite album art—both for albums I love and for albums that I love to look at. The best part: You can easily switch out the albums on display any time. Here's how I did it.

Before

After

What You'll Need

All you really need to buy is two of these L-shaped screws for each record you want to hang; you can easily pick up them up from any hardware store. (I got mine from The Home Depot.) I don't remember how much they cost, but it won't cost more than a few dollars for all of them.

Well Laid Plans

At this point, all you need to do is plan out your space. I set each screw four inches in from the sides of each record and spaced each record one inch apart from the next. I can't really offer any specifications beyond those, as your setup would most likely differ. Spacing the records by an inch offers some nice breathing room between albums, though, and the spacing of the screws has also worked well for me. You could certainly go wider, though I wouldn't suggest putting them much closer together.

Set It Up

I measured everything out and marked my lines and screw holes with blue painter's tape to make sure I'd end up with straight lines. Once you've done all that leg work, you're ready to go.

I actually screwed in everything by hand without a drill or anything of the sort. If you're looking to do a more professional job, you could certainly drill your guide holes beforehand, but doing it all by hand worked for me. As you can see in the picture, I didn't screw them in all the way—namely because they were short screws to begin with, and the closer the screw gets to the wall the more likely the albums are to fall forward. (Not that I've had a problem with that. The recent earthquake in Los Angeles knocked down a few, but they've been fine overall.)

That's It

Once you've screwed everything into the wall, there's not much left to do but hang your album art. It's quick, it's easy, and it's a cheap way to display rotating art on your walls. You can have a lot of fun with it, and you can always find cheap art to work into your display. There's also no reason this idea has to be limited to album, either—you could certainly make a photo wall the same way.

On the other hand, if a photo wall is what you're looking for, check out Gina's previous guide to building a wire photo wall.