The Hallway - The Final Reveal

The day has finally come!  The reveal of the hallway.  It's only been over a year since we started working on it, but good things come to those that wait!

Telephone table from Indigo Furniture. I actually won this in a competition a few years ago, which is  the best (and probably only) competition I've won.  I LOVE it.  

The hanging decorations were gifts on our wedding day, as was the photo frame.  The orchid was a present from the hubby a few years ago which I have managed to keep alive!

The sanded and stained floor and the plush new grey carpet runner.

My lovely bunny prints from HAM, which were gifts from my parents for my last birthday and Christmas.  Black frames, RIBBA from Ikea.

New radiator installed.

New turtle mat to catch dirt on shoes - Christmas gift from my parents. Exciting times when you ask for a doormat for Christmas!

The blind was handmade by me :) 

The light fitting is a HEKTOR from Ikea (was a bit fiddly to fit!)

Yummy floor!

Again, black frames, RIBBA from Ikea (£4 each).  Funny childhood photos, priceless.

New white painted door frames and staircase

The new loft hatch - so smooth!  No more artex!

RIBBA Frame, £7 from Ikea.  Print in frame, printed for free.

Just in case whether you were in any doubt about whether it's an improvement over what we had before!  Here it is in all it's ghastly horror.  Most of these are from moving in day so include the old bathroom too!

I'm so so pleased with how it's turned out

Costs

In terms of costs, I haven't added up every penny, but here are some ball park figures:

Plastering: £780
Paint: £150
Carpet: £90 plus £50 fitting
Blind: £35
Flooring (sanding): £100
Flooring (stain and varnish): £55
New radiator: £90
Under stairs storage: £100
Lighting: £36

Total: ~£1500

Eek! That's a lot of money!  I don't know if we have necessarily added £1500 to the value of the house, but my gosh does it look a heck of a lot better. A lot less unwanted texture!  Apart from the plastering which was a HUGE part of the budget, I really don't think we couldn't have done it any cheaper - we did all the plumbing, sanding, painting, decorating and sewing ourselves!

Which makes it a great time to start a plastering course this weekend - yay!   What have you got planned for the weekend?

Hallway - First Coat of Colour Paint!

The walls have recently gotten their very first coat of colour after their mist coat.  You might remember when I picked out my colour way back when, the very calming, Egyptian Cotton.

I was so excited to get the first coat on, as there is nothing like getting the paint on the walls to feel like you are making progress!

Here we go...

I couldn't believe how olive green it looked when it first went on.  I like it though :)  The brush is also pretty special.  It's a Purdy Monarch Elite.  After reading loads of rave reviews about it, I stumped up the £10 investment (which for me on a paintbrush is a small fortune) for this bad boy.  Oh my days, it's changed my life.  What an amazing brush!  Cutting in is just so easy.  I wasn't particularly blown away when I first got it out the packet, the brush fibres didn't seem to be cut consistently, and it just looked like a normal brush.  However, it's when you start loading the brush with paint, you see it's true beauty.  I would highly recommend this brush.  

Disclaimer: I have not been paid to say nice things about this brush.  I bought it myself and just genuinely love it!

The paint was Dulux Endurance and it went on well.  Two coats covered the walls very well.

Here is the progress shots:

Do you like our ladder origami?  You have no idea how hard it was to try and manipulate this huge ladder into the shapes we needed without dinking our new perfectly smooth walls.  We managed to only dink it once!  Also not the pillowcases over the ladder feet to protect the walls as well.

And here is my super duper tip on painting right into the corners.  Even my new BFF the Purdy Monarch Elite couldn't right in there.  It's my finger tip.  Essentially get some paint right on the tip of your finger and smooth it into the corner.  It sounds silly but it just works.

Excuse my poor painting skills to the right of the corner in these shots,  this was the last corner I did and I was tired by this point!

We put no protective coverings on the floor as they will all be coming up anyway.  At least I hope so because we have trashed the carpet upstairs!

Hallway Plastering - before and after

The plastering of the hallway was a huge step forward for the hallway.  You can see the first part of the story here.  The ceiling was artex textured and the walls just looked like someone had taken a machine gun and peppered the wall with bullets!

Also, before we had the walls plastered, I took the opportunity to go nuts with paint sample pots to figure out what colour we wanted to paint the final finished walls.  I really loved the idea with painting the walls (or at least one wall) navy blue.  But on balance, I think it will make the room really small, even though the sun pours in in the morning.  I'm coming to have to save this beauty of a colour for another room...  I tried lots of 'vaguely beige' colours with a range from Johnstones and Dulux.  However, what looked like a lot of similar colours on the tester pots, became a mess of browns, lilacs and some really strange colours by the time they got on the wall!  The one that I was drawn to though was Dulux's Egytian Cotton.  I painted it in a few spots around the room, and it was interesting how it looked in different lights even in the same room.

Sorry about the really poor lighting in this photo!  But you get the gist of the colours.

The walls were also covered in cracks, including some quite large ones.  The plasterer suggested putting some fine mesh into the plaster to prevent the cracks propagating through to the surface and prevent them spreading.  It added about £100 to the quote, so I thought it was worth a punt.

This is the mesh being put in:

When it was all completed, I just came home from work and stroked the walls :) haha!  What an exciting life I lead!

(And by 'After', I mean 'Progress'!)

As the plaster was drying out.

I can't wait to get painting!!  What exciting projects have you got lined up?