The Hallway Renovation - Part 1

You've guessed by now- these posts are like buses- none for a while and then 2 at once! That's mainly because we both work full time and commute about 4 hours a day (don't ask!) so if/when I get a chance to sit down at the laptop I can bang out a few posts at a time. Today I have got a day off work using up my annual leave before the end of the financial year!

So the hallway - took a.long.time to complete partly because we were finishing off the bathroom at the same time and it needed so much doing. So I am going to split the renovation into 2 posts.

Here is how it looked when we moved in:

This is the view from the bottom of the stair up to the landing

This is the day we moved in- rubber gloves for scrubbing disgusting kitchen!

View from dining area

Looking at these pictures- I cant believe how bad it actually was! All surfaces (walls and ceilings) were covered in wood chip wallpaper which had been painted buttermilk colour. The hall, stairs and landing were all covered in the same pink "pub" carpet which is still :( in the living room and dining area.

There was also a lovely brown net curtain across the window- and golden light shade with sequins on.  At the top of the stairs there was a brown chest of drawers which was left when we moved in. In the end we decided to keep this in our end design as it fits the space so well.

The very first thing i did was rip down the net curtain (along with all the others in the house). Then for a few months we did nothing. It was OK for parties and shifting furniture upstairs as we weren't precious (at all) about the carpet being ruined!

But like many things in this house the renovation started with an impromptu session of stripping the wall paper:

This is after we stripped all the paper and removed the hand rail (this took a few months!!!) Like all walls hiding beneath wood chip wallpaper- they were in a bit of a state. We couldn't afford re-plastering so lots of filling with Polyfilla and caulk ensued. We also bought some paint sample pots (you can see painted on the wall above) and settled on Crown Toasted Almond. We scored a deal when they were buy-one-get-one-free so we paid £17 for 2 big tins.

After eventually stripping off all the little bits of paper- (and with eternal thanks to our friends who lent us a wallpaper steamer!!) and filling in the cracks and scratches we got to sanding the walls and giving the walls and ceiling a coat of white undercoat

You can see in the background I had started stripping the wallpaper in the spare room too by now!

Here's Max filling in the enormous holes left in the wall when we removed the hand rail- it was fixed into the wall on wooden blocks. We left the old carpet in whilst we painted as it kept the house a bit warmer and it didn't matter about splodges of paint!