We've decorated a large portion of our house since we've moved in, including painting, hanging decorations, etc. It's really done a lot to make it homey and updated! We never quite got to the hallways, however. They seemed to be outdated, crummy walkways leading to the other nicely decorated areas of the house, but were definitely not places that offered anything pleasing to the eye. I really usually tried to walk quickly through them so I wouldn't notice the beaten down old wood trim or the bland egg-shell walls.
Well, the past two weeks in between work, school, and a lot of yard work, we've finally been able to get the halls decorated! And the great news is, since we used a lot of materials we already had, we spent less than $75 total. That's pretty great if you ask me. I love to reuse and recycle when I can (but not in a green-freak, hippie kind of way).
So here is a before of the up and down halls...see what I mean by old and boring? Whoever lived here before us abused the trim in this house big time. It's all tore up!
This is midway through the project. The red wall and dark trim together made the hallway look very short and dark. But we fixed that up by painting the baseboards and trim too.
And here's an after!
We used leftover paint from other projects for the walls, frames that I had bought for next to nothing at Michael's at one of their Christmas-time sales, and painted the trim instead of replacing it. And the little round chalkboard in the picture is actually a wood slice left over from our wedding that we painted with chalkboard paint.
The only thing we really invested in was new hand rails, since the ones we had before were so sad. We could have just redone the ones we had, but there were chips in them and so we decided to splurge on some fancier ones. We did re-use the hardware though, and just repainted it.
A great technique for anyone trying to paint things along their carpet...get packing tape and tape it along the floor with just a little bit climbing up onto the baseboard/wall. Then take a butter knife or something similar and push that little edge of the tape between the baseboard and the carpet. There were still spots we had to touch up, but we hardly got any paint on the carpet this way and that's what matters, right?
The only thing left to do is to stain each of the doors and replace their hardware, which we'll do a little at a time. We're going to do a java/espresso stain and brushed nickel hardware. We might try painting the hardware first, but if it doesn't work we'll have to replace it! When they're finished, they'll look something like this:
So, for less than $75, I'd say this project adds another dimension to our humble home. I just love it!
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