When I see a blank wall, my natural impulse is to shower it in art. Such a process goes: nail, hang, step back, think, re-nail, re-hang, step back, think. Continue for half an hour until you have something good enough, return a few days later when you realize it’s garbage, more nailing, more hanging, and eventually, something good emerges. Where that gets a lot trickier is when your blank wall sits above a staircase, like this one does. (Check out that asbestos popcorn ceiling. The most expensive, and most worth it, thing I’ve done to this house is get rid of it. But that’s a pretty boring story, for another day.)

This was one of the Jungle House’s earliest projects, in a period of rapid experimenting and countless choices that could only be described as interesting. I grabbed some boards, gave them a little finish, and drove a ton of screws into every stud I could find. I was lucky to have nearby family who owned of those funky ladders, the ones where each side can be shortened or lengthened individually, because I would absolutely have hurt myself without it.

The hardest part, really, of doing this with the manpower of a single person was getting it level. With nary a square angle to be found, “level” in this house is much more an art than a science. I have had to get pretty creative to achieve the illusion of levelness here. But once I’d found my good enough, this wall became a low-maintenance friend.

Here’s an early iteration:

And here’s its current form. Because I didn’t want to cut into the head clearance space of the stairs, it’s a fairly narrow ledge. But so far, nothing’s fallen down. So far.

Here’s to a life full of carefree art-taste evolution, picture ledge!