Downstairs Hall

The hall was the last room (if you can call a hall a room) to paint on the bottom floor.  We had a situation with the hall ceiling which caused it to take longer and get moved to last.  We scraped every celing in the house (all 4,000 sq ft! Not fun!) except for the kitchen and the hall.  These two areas had been painted over at some point in time and when we tried to scrape them the drywall started tearing up.  So on to Plan B. 

We had bigger issues than the drywall with the ceiling in the kitchen, as we had to take part of it out to add a support beam to level the upstairs floor (see previous post).  We ended up laying wood on the kitchen ceiling instead of painting it.  For the hall, we ended up mudding over the popcorn ceiling and smoothing it out.  This took three coats of mud and some sanding in between each one.  It is smooth and pretty now and looks like all of the others. 

A paintbrush has hit every wall and every ceiling on the bottom floor finally.  Success feels sweet.

Here's the hall before (ceiling already smooth - I have no photo of before we did that).  It's an L shape with one leg leading to the master bedroom and the other leg leading to the laundry room and back stairs. 

I struggled with what to do for light fixtures in here.  I couldn't make up my mind what style I wanted and quite frankly I held off because I was looking for a deal.  We have so so many light fixtures to replace in this house (I have counted around 50) and lights are expensive!  I knew that at 2am one morning, which is when I do my best thinking, a plan would hit me.  And it did.

I bought two lamps with old burlap shades at a junk/antique store last year.  They have been sitting waiting on me to decide what to do with them and where to put them.  The lamps are ugly and will need a makeover (which I think I can handle - wink, wink).  But those shades have the rustic look we've got going on here.  So off to Lowe's for some hanging light kits and we were in business. 

We ended up getting plain hanging pendant lights, the kind you would hang over a bar and to which you would add a glass globe.  We just took the cord out of the base, slipped the lampshade on, stuck the cord back through, and hung.  We cut the cord to the length we wanted so the lights weren't too low for a hall.  Talk about a cheap and easy solution!  I spent next to nothing on the these contraptions, and they aren't too shabby if I do say so myself :). 

And here's how they turned out.

For the life of me, I cannot get that picture to turn right side up when I load it.  It is showing the right way and then it loads in here sideways - CRAZY.  I'm not wasting any more time on it; you get the picture (haha).

We wanted to make the hall functional space, as I am on a mission to organize our lives as part of the remodel of this house.  I wanted a place for the kids to put their backpacks and jackets instead of on my kitchen floor.  We have no mud room, so we needed to make this hall work as one. 

We added a cedar board and hooks on it down the length of the wall.  Since I went with my old faithful antique white paint which is kind of boring, I also wanted to spruce it up a little and so I added some cream colored stripes on that wall under the board.  And voila!

A closer look at my hooks and stripes.



Yes, I realize that I have one door that is white and the rest are painted with my antique finish.  Cut me some slack here. I will get to it...

I will add some art at some point and I have a plan for a homemade corkboard out of wine corks to go on the wall opposite the hooks to hold school papers, photos, etc.  All in due time. 

Now the kids have a place to hang their junk and I have no more unpainted surfaces (besides that door!) on the bottom floor.  This can only mean one thing...time to head upstairs!