Demifloyd! Wow - so good to see your name! One of my absolute favorite homes! For the most part I do 'eyeball it' when I am hanging the arrangements. First I use the hook or whatever is on the back of the pic to lightly mark the wall (by lightly rubbing it on the wall) where the nail or hook should go and then 'rearrange' a nail or two to get it even. When I get down to a row where they are all of the same frame and I want them all even is when I start measuring from the bottom of the picture frame in the row above to where the nail should go. I try not to let perfection get in the way. Life's not perfect and it's killer to try. Some pics hang perfectly straight and some get wonky when a door is slammed or kids are jumping up and down. I don't worry about it - I just re-straighten when I walk by. That is if and when I feel like it. I could totally see a bulletin board style format. Maybe you could make copies of the pics and use pretty tacs to afix them like jewelry and then swap out the regular bulleting board frame w/ a really pretty ornate one. Shoot - I'd bet it'd be real easy to make one to the size you want! Nicole - my dad said that it's a little stainless steel camera that can shoot underwater (I'm sure not too deep) and can shoot in the rain and snow. He said it's about the size of a cell phone. We'll see! Sable CA - I'll have to check out that level yardstick. DH had gotten me a laser level but I never use it since hooks aren't often placed evenly and by the time I got my level set up I could have eyeballed 2 or 3 in the same amount of time. Catkin - I'll see ya over there. Revere Pewter is one of my favorites! Newhomebuilder - I love that picture. Apparently a couple traveled all over on a road trip in that truck with their dog and took a picture of him at every stop. My mom went back to get me more but they were gone. :( Judging by the style of her clothing I think they picture is from the 30's or 40's. Beekeepers wife - I bought my frames black but I know that many people spray paint their frames black. Excellent way to save money! Personally I like the odd ball frame thrown in the mix. While most of the frames are standard gallery style there are a few that have a more ornate frame that are hanging up there. Another suggestion that I found helped me accumulate frames more cost effectively is not to worry about whether or not you have a picture in mind to go in the frame. Buy the frame anyway. It's so cheap to scan a pic and have it made to fit the size of the frame that you already have. Or you can have a mat made to accomdate a smaller sized picture that you have to fit in a larger frame. Don't get bogged down w/ "But the picture that I have won't fit that frame" or "Do I have a picture to go in that frame" etc.

All this talk of decay and decadence brings me back to this project, which is to humanize a living space that's proportioned, except for the average sized kitchen, along palatial lines, while leaving the open concept open. It's interesting that with all this marketing of the raw, this former industrial space is pretty polished. The concrete is clean and smooth (not really anything like Palimpsest's favorite Brutalism), the metals (trusses, stairs, catwalks, ducts, window frames) are smooth and painted an appealing white with a green cast, and are in great shape and don't need to be redone. These may be industrial relics, but very civilizedly so. The decadent part is the size of the space, especially for one person who is barely beyond being a "girl". Most urbanites would be comfy (well...cramped but content) in something the size of the mezzanine. Without the upper bits, it's basically a two bedroom, two bathroom, open concept apartment with a dining area, living area and kitchen. On steroids. Big time. :) The owner is confused by our discussion, as I've relayed some of the more interesting bits, but it's helped us focus on how to make the living room functional for more than cocktail parties. She doesn't want to divide the space, which would suck all the grandeur out of it, and she doesn't want conversation groups. Palimpsest's digital living gave me an idea which I thought was silly, but might be a go, for a central tower for media, rather than putting it against a wall. This must have been done before--it doesn't feel particularly original--but I think it would work. We talked about making it out of wood and hiding all the blackness of the equipment, but it would be awfully big and block the view. More honest and practical would be to have a central service column with all the cables and juice, and put lots of screens on swing arms, as well as media players and the like. Perhaps have smaller screens facing into the catwalks. It would sort of be an inside out control console crossed with the monolith from 2001. Or it could, I suppose, be made of of brass steam fittings and go all steampunk. :) Becky, I totally forgot about that place!! Thanks for linking it. I think its the Navajos who don't tear down old structures but let the earth reclaim them naturally. Seeing it done on a castle scale is offputting, however, to put it mildly. I used to know someone who had owned and lived in a castle--the real ancient fortress kind--for many years. It really sounds dreadfully uncomfortable, and one imagines that they do best as amusements for tourists.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I recognized myself, but at the time I read Anne Tyler's novel, Back When We Were Grownups, I certainly did share a lot of feelings and attitudes with the main character, Rebecca Davitch. I remember when she expressed the thought that she was living the wrong life, in a strange way I could relate to that - just had never thought of it that way before.

I can't offer a fix, but I can mention a preventive measure once the situation is resolved: With Windows versions up to Win 8 anyway (you Win 10 users can correct me if changed) , it's important to "dismount" connected external media before disconnecting them. There's an icon on the taskbar that should say "Safely remove hardware and eject media". Before removing thumb drives, USB drives, or memory cards, that icon need to be clicked on and the item intended to be disconnected needs to be identified, so that Windows can end communications with it and allow for a safe disconnection. Failure to do that can corrupt files stored on the media and make them not accessible. Should you find that too hard to do, shut down the PC and wait until it is completely off before removing the external memory device.