Remember when I started talking about making over my hall? That was a year ago people, a YEAR!!!!! I swear to god, my life is just a blur of school runs and loads of laundry these days, with the odd day out thrown in to make sure it's just enjoyable enough that I don't totally lose my mind.
So, I started making over my hallway almost a year ago, and while it's been finished for ages now honestly the blog has been completely on the back burner for months. I'm still doing projects, but the reality is that at the end of the day sitting in my clean living room drinking tea and learning how to be a better murderer via all the true crime documentaries Netflix has to offer seems a lot more appealing than editing photos and putting together posts. By that time of day my brain is mostly mush anyway, so I couldn't do it even if I wanted to.
So, to remind you where we were a year ago, my hall was painted brown and had a filthy stair carpet that was probably cheap and nasty when it was installed somewhere in the early 2000's and hadn't improved with age.
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| This is the only picture I have of the hall in it's original state, and it doesn't really show just how brown those walls were. You can also see the dirt on the carpet though, which is really lovely. |
To be honest the hall was one of the last thing's on my to-do list, but for some reason it just struck me one day how awful the entrance to our house was and how it really wasn't a nice place to come home to. So I made my mind up to do it, but the problem was that it was a really large (and high!) area to paint and there were eight doors to do as well as all the skirting and the stairs. It just wasn't something I was going to be able to do, so when I had enough for the makeover put away I got quotes from local painters and hired one to go ahead with the job.
I chose the paint and ordered it, and they turned up exactly when they said they would, spent three days working on my hall and landing and then finished up, leaving some really tidy work. However.......it ended up costing a lot more than they had quoted me. Like 50% more. They originally quoted me €450 and I ended up paying €600.
Now, the work did end up taking them a day longer than planned as it needed a third coat to cover the brown on the walls, but my issue was that they had visited the house, inspected everything they would be required to paint and been told exactly what colour I wanted. I then purchased exactly the brand of paints they requested (the most expensive!) and even got extra for them when they needed it. So my question was how they had under estimated by so much when they were professionals who had done this a hundred times before? Anyway, the work was done well and I paid for it, but I think it will be a long time before I hire people to do work I'm physically able to do myself again.
After the walls were done I could finish the stairs, and even though I love the look (and cleanliness!) of a wooden staircase my stairs were not good enough to leave bare, and anyway Max would definitely have fallen down them at least twice a day if they didn't have some sort of covering to add traction, so a runner was definitely on the cards. I priced getting the stairs and landing carpeted, and while it was very reasonable I couldn't find a carpet that wasn't extremely boring, but then, one fateful day in Dunnes I found an amazing runner in the Caroline Donnelly section and the rest, as they say, is history. I bought four of them to cover the area I needed which cost me €120 total, wheras the carpeting was going to cost €250. So not only do I now have beautiful stairs that make me smile when I see them, but I saved money as well! And here it is.....
With the painting and stairs finished all that was needed was some dramatic lighting and some art and mirrors for the walls and it was done. I love how the bold pattern and colours of the runner make it possible to leave the walls fairly plain and uncluttered without having the space feel bare. I did originally plan on having art run up the wall by the stairs but in the end I preferred the clean walls. The lovely gilt mirror at the top belonged to Gavin's granny and it's really nice to have a prominent place for it now.
The lighting is from Amazon (it was €50 including the bulbs!!) the art is from Society 6, and all in, excluding paying the painters this makeover cost me less than €500 (I had a lot of the decor stuff like mirrors and art already but I'm including their cost in the total).
I'm really happy with it. It's a bit more boho/eclectic than what I've done up until now but I'm finding my style is veering that way a little bit more recently. I find myself drawn to colour and pattern, especially when it's on a clean, uncluttered backdrop.
The wall at the end of the hall had been black for quite a while, and I decided to keep it as it was with the gold mirrors on it as I still loved it and it fit in with everything else. To the left of it is a little alcove that we use to store shoes and coats. The shoe storage is from Homestore and More and we've had it for years, the little "Hello" coat hook is from the Range last year.
So what do you think? Despite the fact that it cost more than I had planned I'm really happy with it. It's really bright and welcoming now, and now that it's done the downstairs feels a lot more "finished". I still have to finish off the upstairs hall with some art and the floor up there needs to be finished as I just painted the sub-floor black and called it a day but I'll eventually finish it off properly.
I'm also glad I went with white even though I've been asked how I keep it clean with kids and their grubby paws running around but the simple answer is that it's a satin finish wipeable paint and a quick rub of a damp cloth gets rid of most mucky fingerprints, and those that it doesn't are still no match for a magic eraser.
So there you have it, a whole new look and it only took me a year to get around to taking a few below-par photos of it to share it with you. I'd eventually love to re-finish the orange floors down here and get some built-in storage under the stairs but those are "in an ideal world" jobs for now I'm calling this area done. I have a post explaining how I installed the stair runner pretty much ready to go so check back for that next week!
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