First up I must apologise for the radio silence, the reason will become clear as you read on!
This post follows on from my last blog “Plans for my hallway and why I’m so excited!” Where you can read all about why this is the only area of our house that I haven’t got to work on with the paint brushes and also what plans I had for this space.
So it all happened fairly quickly as the decorator had a last minute cancellation. It was either start straight away or wait until the end of May and me being as impatient as I am just couldn’t wait that long!! When the decorator came to price up the job he said it would take at least 7 days and he only had 4 unless I wanted to wait. So I booked him for the 4 days to start straight away and decided I could tackle the rest… not realsing how much work was involved!
Walls
As soon as we had the green light from our landlords and I knew Sean, the decorator was due to start I couldn’t wait any longer and got to work straight away by ripping up the carpet… this has to be one of my favourite moments, I was so glad to see the back of it! Then on Monday morning Sean arrived. He’s a quick worker with his roller and after day 4 all the emulsioning was finished including a fresh coat on the ceilings. He applied 2 coats over the wallpaper and used a total of 20L of emulsion. The colour I went for was Valspar in Rocky mountain mist which is the same as I have in my dining room. I didn’t have long to chose a grey and I knew that I loved this one so played it safe. Those of you who have been following me for a while may be wondering why I didn’t go dark. The reason for this is because there’s not much natural light coming through and even some of the mid greys were looking really dark when I tested them so I wanted to keep it a really light and fresh space.
Goodbye green carpet!
Stairs looked amazing underneath.
Wall colour looking a bit better don’t you think?!
Woodwork
So once all the emulsion was finished that just left me with the not so small task of doing all the woodwork, including 9 doors, the skirting boards on all 3 floors, the dado rail, the banister including spindles on two staircases and the floorboards downstairs including the stairs as we had chosen a stair runner. I know, I know! That’s a lot of painting and to top it off we had already ordered the carpet and been given a delivery date of just 2 weeks time…. so I had exactly two weeks to get it all finished including sanding the floorboards in the downstairs hallway! As well as juggling work and all my usual household chores… I would not be defeated!
My original plan was to do all the woorkwork in a slightly darker shade of grey than the walls. I bought a couple of testers and chose one that I liked. I went off to buy a 2.5L tin of it and once I’d started applying it… you guessed it, I didn’t like it!! (Don’t tell the Hubby!!) It made the grey on the walls look a very cold, bluey grey where as when I put white next to the grey emulsion it looked a lovely warm shade. This was the darker shade below that I didn’t like. So I decided to stick with white and I used Dulux once satinwood. I wanted a contrast for the handrail so I painted it in a Little Greene oil based gloss which I had left over from my kitchen tiles.
Floors & Carpet.
I would have loved a painted staircase but my husband thought it would be too noisy and too slippy for the kids (he’s always been the practical one!). He wanted a carpet so we compromised and went for a runner up the stairs and I decided to sand and paint the floorboards in the hallway downstairs. This was by far the messiest job of all, it probably would have been far less messy if I had paid a professional company to come in and do it for me but with us renting I didn’t want the added expense. So I went along to our local tool hire company and came home with 2 different sanders. One was for the stairs and was really just to key the existing paint so that I could paint over it and the other was a disc sander to sand the floorboards… this was the messy one!
The not so messy one…my favourite!
Looking good!
The dust from the sander which is still settling now, 3 weeks later!
Painting the stairs… halfway there!
Once I had finished sanding and it was all cleaned up I started painting the stairs so the runner could be laid and then got to work on painting the floorboards. For this I used a fabulous floor paint which I would highly recommend called V33 renovation floor paint it was super easy to apply and dried really quickly with a great coverage.
We chose a carpet from Franks the flooring store which I believe is a North East based company. I had grey in mind but I didn’t want the hallway to look too grey so I chose a brownie grey colour for more of a contrast which I just love.
Accessories.
The radiator is at the bottom of the stairs which is ideally where I would have liked to have put a console table but it just wouldn’t look right positioned in front of the radiator so I decided to go for a scaffold board shelf above it instead. That way I could still have a lamp, plant, some flowers etc…. on there. I used these metal brackets at either side of the radiator to fasten it to the wall. See below for stockists.
Mirror || Basket bag || Typography print || Beauty is everything print || Coat hooks || Runner
So that’s the hallway done and it feels so good to say that! As you can imagine, I’m absolutely delighted with how it has turned out, it feels like walking into a different house when I open the door. Justin and the kids love it too. There are still a few more pieces that I would like to add, like more art on the walls and I’m still lusting after my vintage cinema chairs but Rome wasn’t built in a day was it?! We also built a cupboard under the stairs which hides a whole lot of clutter and I transformed my internal windows in crittal style beauties. Both of these will be covered in separate blog posts so keep an eye out for these!
I’d love to know what you think? Are you looking at revamping your hallway? If you need any help then check out my interior styling options or get in contact, I’d love to work with you.
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