Hallway Progress

As mentioned before, last weekend we spent a lot of time working on the house and the majority of that was in our hallway. In our little bungalow we have 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom all which open up to this hallway area. The area really serves no purpose so you can’t do much with it but with it being open to all the rooms in the house it has to at least look decent. But it sat for over a year; unpainted, no furniture, 2 random pictures hung on the wall and a rug with stains all over it. Awesome.

View of room before yellow. See those lovely rug stains I said were there?

I really didn't mind the brown color that was in there previously but I just felt like we needed something to brighten it up a bit. And boy did it get bright!

So back in August I had had enough. Brett was out of town for the weekend so I had free time on my hands and figured I was going to spruce up the place a little to surprise him. I finally found a table I loved at World Market (and on sale) and knew we had some left over paint from our living room so thought “This is going to be perfect!!”. WRONG. The table turned out great however the paint job was a disaster. Seriously. The color looks great in our living room but with the hallway being so much smaller with a lot more light, the very light yellow/cream color in our living room was now a bright canary yellow in the hall. Gross.

This is the only picture I have of the yellow walls after. The picture actually makes it worse than it really it but I think you get why we hated it so much. (and yes, I am sideways in the picture frame - I was just testing out a few.)

My mom had just repainted their guest bath and after seeing the color she used I knew it would look great in the hall (which is Monroe Bisque by Benjamin Moore but color matched at Sherwin Williams). So, new paint color picked out, paint purchased, problem solved. Except free time was not on our side so it sat… and sat… and I had yellow staring at me in the face every morning for a month just reminding me of my poor choice in paint color.

AND we still had the problem of the rug. That nasty, stained rug that everyone has to see whenever they come to our house. I searched and searched and searched for the perfect rug. Going back and forth on different colors and finally found the perfect one at Pottery Barn (and we had left over money from wedding returns there – double score). WRONG. It was on back order until mid-January. Really?? So back to the drawing board. Then finally I went to a new website called Shades of Light that I found on my favorite DIY blog I follow, Young House Love. Shades of Light is a great site with a TON of rugs (and you guessed it, lights) – some cheap, some expensive but a good selection nonetheless. And yes, I found the perfect one (again). It was cheaper than the one at PB and the blog had a 10% discount code on their site so that basically covered the shipping fee! It’s on its way and I can’t wait to see how it looks in the room!  Let's all take a moment of silence for hope that it works in there....

I'm in love! I may get all my new rugs from Shades of Light!

SO, the perfect rug was found, the paint was purchased and we finally had a free day to get the painting done. And a little paint goes a long way! It looks a million times better in there!! With some new pictures hung, a new rug in route this room is on its way to being complete and I couldn’t be more happy! I still have a few little nik-naks (is that a real word?) to purchase and get the new rug in there but will share the final shot once it is all complete.