Tech How To | At Home with Tech

November 9, 2025

How to Design a Photo Gallery Memory Wall at Home

I usually show off family photos at home through my digital screens. (I haven’t bought photo paper in years.) The pictures glow on my little Nixplay digital frames and on my family room screen via my Apple TV interface. For years, I’ve enjoyed the flexibility to rotate countless images through these little memory portals.

What I’ve mostly ignored is the art of analog photo framing where you make a print, place it in a wooden frame and hang it on your wall. That’s so 1925. Plus, you ruin your walls in the process with all those little nail holes.

Well, unless you want to live in a sterile environment with empty walls, you have to accept some damage across the years and include a little patch and paint planning for your home.

So, I recently embarked on a journey to return to this old-school approach and frame more photos to hang.

My goal was to create a memory wall/family history gallery featuring photos from past generations in our hallway.

The Best Archival Photos have Visual Markers
I turned to the collection of pictures from my parents’ old photo albums, many of which I had already digitized. So, I was off to a great start, but I was quickly disappointed with what I found.

Sure, my parents took family photos, but a lot of them simply weren’t that great. Those Kodak moments were turned into soft, mediocre images captured by inferior 20th century consumer tech. (I’m admittedly spoiled by today’s smartphone photography magic.)

More importantly, so many of these images couldn’t stand on their own and reflect a story. The backgrounds were simply too vague.

Visual markers are the key to unlocking the story in any photo. Without them, a photo’s archival value rarely lasts beyond one generation. (Food for thought as you practice your own photography.)

Going back a generation to my grandparents, I had fewer pictures to work with. That said, I could tell my paternal grandmother really enjoyed being photographed.

I never met her, but her vibrant personality glowed in all the photos she’s featured in.

I have just a couple of pictures of my great grandparents, and that’s it.

Other Factors to Consider
Once you select the best photos to work with, then you’ve got to figure out how they should go together. And that can be much harder than you’d think.

How you position archival family pictures can totally affect the story you want to tell. This is an entirely different skill set than I’m used to. (Remember, I just rotate pictures in digital frames.)

Plus, I was overwhelmed by the challenge to properly position a collage of photo frames on my wall and make it look organized and well designed (as opposed to a mess).

And then finally, the idea of puncturing my wall with lots of little nails almost pushed me over the edge towards inaction.

Display a Story in Groups of Four Photos
To help reduce my stress and solve for these complexities, I decided to make my photo frames do more of the work. I purchased wall-mountable frames that housed four 5″ x 7” photos each. (I picked up a few 25” x 10” frames from Target.)

This strategy reduced my clutter concerns by 75% right there.

And it also created a structure for how I would organize my photos. Each group of four pictures needed to represent its own story.

Suddenly, my project became much easier.

One group showcased portraits of three generations on my father’s side as well as my maternal grandparents.
Another group featured my parents over the years.

Easy, right?

The only functional limitation to this design was I needed to group photos by orientation: portrait or landscape.

Still, I was able to make it work.

A Photo Collection Reflects a Larger Family Narrative
I’m happy to report the grand opening of Barrett’s family history gallery
(7am-6pm weekdays and 9am-1pm on weekends).

But seriously, it feels great to have a few photos on our wall that display my family’s story. Previously, I’ve had some of these individually framed on shelves throughout our house. But they were effectively hidden from daily view.

Plus, I like that our son can see this new collection. He knew my dad (who passed in 2022), but he never met my mom.

Yes, there’s more work to do… There’s a whole other family history to reflect on our walls. That comes next.

Simple and Effective Design
How ironic. What’s old is new again. So obvious… yet still requiring me to (re)discover these mini ‘aha’ moments.

Until the day comes when I upgrade my hallway to wall-to-wall digital screens, relying on old-school frames with four photos each is my DIY photo gallery solution.

I’m keeping it simple.

November 2, 2025

How to Delete a Retired Nest Device from Your Google Home App

I really had no choice but to retire my old Nest Learning Thermostat. It’s an aging 2nd generation model, and Google finally stopped supporting it. So, I recently upgraded to the current gen 4 model and successfully installed that one. Problem solved, right?

Well, not entirely.

The final step was to delete the old unit from my Google Home App on my iPhone. (Who wants to see a deactivated device lingering on your app’s interface as ‘Offline?’)

According to an email I received from Google, the gen 2 model was supposed to automatically evaporate from the app. But it defied that directive and remained in place… stubbornly so.

When I tried to remove it manually, there was no obvious way to do that. So, I had to dig deeper.

If you’ve been trying to crack the same code, here’s how to delete your decommissioned Google Nest Learning Thermostat from your Google Home app:

4 Steps to Remove a Device from the Google Home App

#1 – First, tap on the circular icon with your initial on the top right of the Google Home app.

#2 – Then, tap on “Home settings.”

#3 – Under “Device, groups & rooms,” find and tap on your old device.

#4 – At the very bottom of the next page, tap “Remove device.”

So Simple…
That should do the trick! It’s super simple for any of your Nest devices, but you need to know where to look in the app.

After this tweak, you’re back to where you started… with remote and clutter-free access to a sleek Google Nest Learning Thermostat at the center of your smart home experience.

October 26, 2025

Avoid this Surprise When Installing Your Google Nest Learning Thermostat Gen 4

Getting 12 years out of any piece of tech is more than anyone should expect. That said, if it’s still working and doing the job, why would you want to replace it? (Unless you simply need the latest and greatest.)

Well, you’d pull the plug when the manufacturer forces you to. If the old unit’s tech is so obsolete, it can’t be maintained by the manufacturer’s current standards. And that’s what’s happened to my trusty Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd gen) from 2013.

Goodbye Nest Learning Thermostat Gen 2
In tech years, it’s like a century old. A lot’s happened, including Google buying Nest to enter the smart home market.

So yes, Google has walked away from its older Nest Learning Thermostat population. The official Google language is “end of support.” What that means is 1st and 2nd-generation models can no longer be reached remotely via the app on your phone as of October 25, 2025. (They’ve been “unpaired and removed” from the Nest app or Home app.)

Poof.

It’s Time to Buy Gen 4
Yes, you can still operate these ‘relics’ manually, but I’ve always spent more time interfacing with my Nest Learning Thermostat through the app on my iPhone.

Most significantly, these units are no longer supported, which according to Google “may lead to decreased performance with continued use.” So that’s code for… it’s just a matter of time till they stop working altogether.

Look, I get it. No web-connected piece of tech is going to last forever.

So, if you want your Google Nest Learning Thermostat ecosystem to remain reliable and fully operational, you have no choice but to upgrade to the current 4th generation model, which costs $279.99.

Ouch!

Fortunately, Google has softened the blow by offering a $130 discount for current 1st and 2nd gen owners. So that effectively drops the price point to $149.99 plus tax. (Shipping is free.)

Registered owners should have received an emailed discount code towards the purchase of the current 4th gen model.

Three Color Choices
So Barrett went ahead and bought himself an early holiday present with his discount code. (Thank you, Google.)

My hardest decision was deciding which color to get. I decided on Obsidian with a black base. (I felt it would present a cleaner, unified aesthetic in our living room. (The other choices are silver and gold with a white base.)

My Installation Surprise
Happily, installing my new 4th gen unit was the essentially the same as my old 2nd gen model.

The only relevant difference was the size of the circular base plate, which you screw onto the wall. (The thermostat clicks onto the base plate.)

Here’s the problem:

The new base plate is slightly smaller than the old one. And that tiny footprint difference can be a really big deal.

Why? Well, the new base plate will reveal a little more of your wall…
that might be unpainted!

Surprise!

Yes, that’s exactly what happened to me. I realized there would be dark, thin paint ring behind my new, gleaming Google Nest Learning Thermostat that revealed our living room’s paint color from years ago.

Granted, the 4th gen thermostat’s beautiful face is bigger than my gen 2’s screen. It’s plenty big to effectively block the view where the thermostat’s smaller circular ‘neck’ touches the wall.

But I would know, and if you looked from an angle, you’d definitely see the old paint. Ugh!

Sure, Google has thought of this and provided a white trim plate to use that would cover up this kind of problem.

But I didn’t want to use the trim plate. I liked the clean look of the black, circular orb perfectly protruding from my wall like a futuristic Cylon interface.

I just need to get rid of that thin ring of old paint.

I Had to Put on My Painter’s Hat
So, I hurried downstairs and rummaged through my basement to see if I still had a little bit of our living room’s current paint in a can somewhere. I eventually found it, picked up a brush and performed the paint fix.

This of course delayed my installation process, as I had to wait for the paint to dry before continuing. But it was clearly a step worth taking.

So just remember that you might need to bake that extra time into your own installation plan.

Cool New Sensor Pucks
If you’ve been living with a 1st or 2nd generation model, you may not know about Google’s little wireless ‘satellite’ temperature-sensing pucks to pair with your main thermostat. (I didn’t.)

These “Nest Temperature Sensors” (now 2nd generation) can be placed throughout your home to help create a more even temperature throughout your rooms (effectively simulating some of the benefits of a multi-zone HVAC system).

When you buy a 4th gen Google Nest Learning Thermostat, it also comes with one Nest Temperature Sensor. (You can purchase more separately.)

With multiple sensors, you can schedule which sensor controls your thermostat at different times of the day. You can always default to the sensor in your base unit. And you can also average between your sensors.

I placed my temperature sensor in our sunroom, which tends to be cooler during the winter months than the rest of our house. Hopefully, the sensor will convince my base unit (in our living room) to keep providing a little more warmth in the early evening when my family tends to hang out in our sunroom. (That’s how I programmed it.)

Upgrade Complete!
I’ve always enjoyed my old Nest Learning Thermostat as the center of my smart home experience. And now that I’ve upgraded, I’m pleased that I’ve refreshed my relationship with Google’s gen 4 model.

I hope it takes me all the way to 2037. But with the pace of change these days, something tells me we may be discussing this again a tad sooner…

Category: Tech How To

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