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 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?