Hallway Reveal

As you know, we've been pushing to finish our hallway this month, and I'm happy to see that it's finished.  In the future, we will want to run quarter round along the bottom of all the baseboards of the house for a cleaner look, but that's not a priority at the moment.

Instead of a full recap of our Style Cure journey, today, I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

To refresh your memories, here's a picture of our hallway taken the day we moved in:

And here it is before we started Apartment Therapy's Style Cure:

 

Now for the fun part.  I'll post pictures today and explanations and sources later. 

 



 

We are so happy with our functional and colourful new room!

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• Rolling Out the Red (and Blue) Carpet

Rolling Out the Red (and Blue) Carpet

 

Remember this post, where I mentioned that I had found the perfect runner for our hallway, which would also tie in two of my inspiration photos?  Well it finally arrived, and we couldn't be happier.

 

Corey knows I've been checking for it every day and I had really hoped to have it before the end of Style Cure but it was looking less likely.  Yesterday, he actually intercepted the delivery guy and hid the box from me so we could open it together.  Are we total dorks for getting this excited about a runner?  Probably!

 

Before I show you the glamour shots of our new rug, I want to mention the great experience I had with the Etsy seller who sold it to us.  Yamood Turkman Carpets is still a new-ish shop, but the prices, quality of the merchandise and selection were some of the best I could find.  The shop owner communicates clearly and responds quickly.  This is the second time I've purchased a vintage rug from him (I also have a small one in the kitchen.) and I know he ships his items immediately and they arrive as described.  No, this is not a commercial or sponsored post, I just happen to think this is a great seller for someone in the market for a similar item.

 

In this case, I was looking for specific dimensions and I wanted rich colours.  I didn't see exactly what I wanted in his shop but I emailed him and he found four runners that matched my criteria, so we worked out an excellent price on my favourite.  We ended up purchasing a red and blue Afghan run, which is about 20 years old and still in excellent condition. 

 

To remind you, here's a shot of the (too short) runner that we had in the hall before.

 



And here's our new bad boy!  FYI, I snapped these pictures the day the rug arrived, because I couldn't wait, but the folds from being shipped will fall out completely in a couple of days.

 

We are so happy with it and we think it makes our entrance look much more elegant.  The pile is great and the rug feels soft and luxurious.  The rich colours make the hall feel so elegant!

 



Next step: Hanging some art!

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Farrow and Ballers

I know I've been a little MIA this week, but it's been a busy one.  We've been up to our necks in wedding planning.  Who knew this would be so intense???  We've made some big decisions (We both know exactly what we want, so it's easy.) and we'll be starting to book our vendors soon.  Woo hoo!  I've also been a little under the weather, so we've been trying to get lots of rest and taking care of ourselves.

On the home front, we've been plugging along with the Style Cure and have finally painted the hallway.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we used Farrow and Ball's Elephant's Breath and we're already thrilled with our investment.

The paint was so easy to apply and the coverage was excellent!  When we made mistakes, (I made tons!) the paint just wiped away with a damp cloth and, perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of F&B paints, there was no sickening paint smell! 

Here's what our hallway looked like before:

Okay, that's more of a "during" picture, but we had to scrape all chipped paint from the baseboards before we could paint them again.  You can see all our test paint on the walls.

Here's a picture I took before bed after completing the first coat:

It's still in need of some touching up around the door trim, since I have not yet figured out how to handle the wonky walls in our new/old house but it's a huge improvement already!  The door itself, is another story (Who noticed it was hung upside down?) and it is on our list of things to replace.

And here's our hallway after the second coat.  Our walls still aren't perfect, (The house is 87 years old, so we don't expect them to be.) but the Farrow and Ball paint is much more forgiving of the minor imperfections.

The colour is fabulous: warm and rich with tons of depth!  We also love the Modern Emulsion finish, which is slightly shinier than the Estate Emulsion test pot we tried, but still matte.

We also notice that the pigments are so rich that the colour truly changes depending on the light.  Sometimes blue, sometimes green and other times a pinkish grey.  It's interesting and understated and the fact that the colour is difficult to pin down, makes it feel even more sophisticated.

One step closer!

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Style Cure: Hallway Makeover Progress Part 5

FYI, I'm attempting to give my hallway a face lift this month by following Apartment Therapy's Style Cure.  Why don't you join and "cure" a room of your own? :)

We've been making a little progress on the hallway.  To give you a brief recap, here's a basic floor plan:



I also collected several inspiration photos:

 



Some helped me to narrow down a colour palette.  I love the blues and greens in these pictures:

Others gave me ideas for floor coverings and textural elements.  I found a fabulous rug (source will come later) and I already have a fluffy sheepskin for added texture:

We needed some new lighting, because I was so sick of looking at that ugly boob light.  I got a picture of Corey fondling... rounding second base with... replacing the old light with the light I painted a few weeks ago. 

 

We created a more functional landing strip:

I also realized that my best chance to add serious colour would be through art, like in the photo below:

 

I'm not an artist, (nor do I pretend to be one) but I figured something personal and colourful would be better than bare walls.  I figured I could waste time deciding on something perfect and saving up for it, or I throw something up there in the meantime so I'm not living with unfinished space.

 

So I sucked it up and sat down with a scary blank canvass.  I propped up a painting I love (on the left) for inspiration.

 



For the sense of humour element that I wanted in the room, I picked up these little dolls at Ikea, painted them white and added censor strips (cardboard I painted black) over their "private" areas.  They make me laugh.

 

And I played around with the paint and found a fun new hobby.  By the way, the picture below was meant to be a random guy... it somehow ended up looking like Corey.  No idea how that happened.

 

 



Obviously, I'm no van Gogh, (that rhymed!) but these will serve as placeholders until we can afford to slowly build our collection of real art!  The water's kind of kicking my bum (It's so hard to paint water!) in that last painting... but I'm working on it and I find it to be very meditative. 

The paintings are okay... definitely not great.  But I'm trying to push myself to be more free with this new/old house: Paintings not great?  Oh well, they're personal and they'll look fine until we can find something we really love!  Wouldn't this be a great philosophy to apply towards every room?

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