Well…we officially went grey…in our hallways that is (thankfully I’ve only got a few stray greys on my head…fingers crossed they don’t multiply!). It only took us a year (sheesh!) to go from this:
To this:
To This:
(sorry for the backwardsness in the series…ooops!). To finally this:
I know there’s still a lot to do but it’s a big, big, BIG improvement! And I’m loving the grey. I’m so glad that I ended up going with it instead of cream (recap that debacle here). I also had a little bit of a debate on the paint finish. I usually go with semi-gloss paint for the walls (I know…weird). I love the washability of semi-gloss. But I know the go-to paint for most wall treatments is eggshell. I tried the eggshell for the first time with this painting project, it was touch and go there for a little while, I almost threw my paint brush at the wall and swore I would never stoop so low as to treat it with eggshell, but now I love my eggshell paint.
It’s funny how you make a big improvement, like painting a space, and then see new things that need updating or freshening. For instance, I now look past the walls and see this door:
Suddenly it didn’t fit. The cream doesn’t go with the grey, it’s dirty (I haven’t washed it…ever…don’t judge me), it needs trim, the hardware could use some spray painting, and oh…yeah…it’s broken. Let’s take a little looksie:
See the nice big crack? We had a little bit of an oops moment a while back. I had propped open our old, solid wood door by wedging a shim in between the door and the jam. Definitely not my brightest moment. Colby didn’t know this and tried to close the door and CRACK! We both love the old world style of the door and want to keep it. It has a skeleton key for crying out loud! How can we get rid of that?! Colby thinks he can repair the crack and I’m going to sand down the old gal and give ‘er a glossy white paint job. Oh…and a little spray paint job on the hardware…oil rubbed bronze perhaps?! Back to the paint job reveal…here’s the staircase area:
And some more staircase:
Another totally ugly area that is now an eyesore since the walls are all fresh and new. While we do plan a big redo on the staircase someday, we’re planning a little “for now” renovation including some sanding, paint, and bead board. It should make a HUGE difference. Here’s another angle from the staircase, looking down with the front door open to the porch:
That’s all residue from where the old, nasty carpeting used to be glued to the staircase. It’s getting sanded down and painted soon…I hope. I also want to install a cool new light fixture above the staircase. There’s such great space there for a dramatic lighting effect and currently this is what we’ve got:
The pigtail light is our savior for lighting a space temporarily until we figure out exactly what we want for lighting. It makes it so much easier to sand and mud and paint without the light getting in the way. And they’re super cheap at only a couple bucks each. And finally here’s the upper hallway:
I’m loving how the grey color tends to change depending on the lighting and the other colors around it. Standing near the bathroom the grey feels like it has a greenish tint to it and over by the blue office it has this ocean blue/green feel. It’s turning out to be a very dynamic color. Another space to note is our downstairs hallway:
That hallway is long and that’s a huge wall to the right that’s just begging for a little artwork to fill it. I’m working on that project as we speak…errrrr…blog, so stay tuned for details.
Pssst…check out some of our old hallway blogging posts…like when we recapped our progress at the end of year one in the blogiversary tour or when Colby put down temporary click flooring in the upper hallway or when we gutted the hallway at random on a Friday night. Good times…good times.
