Make It Nice: Gallery Wall Tutorial

Welcome back to Make It Nice, Defector's best interior design advice column. Today, we have an unused spare room, a crowded gallery wall, and a (partial) resolution to my ugly bathroom sink.

Sean asks:

We just de-Christmased the front room of our 125-year old bungalow in Denver and are kinda stuck on how to make it more useful for us.  It's main non-Christmas season use is for the dogs to bark at delivery people between drooling and farting on two chairs we found on FB Marketplace.  I totally get that back in the day people greeted guests and probably sat by the fire and read the newspaper on Sunday mornings in these rooms, but what do people do with them now?  Any guests we have end up around the kitchen counter and sometime between the ’70s and 2000s the fireplace/chimney was used as a furnace vent, so it's inoperable.

We already have a den with a sectional and a TV, so my partner would prefer not to replicate that in this room since there's only a dining room and no doors between them.  We already have a workout space and our offices elsewhere in the house so those aren't appealing options either.  Two cats joined our pack in the last year so all the plants/hanging vines have been relocated or downsized, so we have a lot of flexibility but no good direction.  Got any ideas on how to make this more functional in 2026?  Tax return season is almost upon us so want to start considering/pricing out some options.