Hallway Makeover - Stage One

For those of you who visit regularly you may remember I discussed my hallway makeover here. I have been undecided about the final colour so I painted more colour samples on the wall to try and help with the decision. They were there for two weeks before I made a decision and bought the paint. It then took me another four weeks to find the time to use the paint. I decided the two colours on the right were too grey in toning, so it was down to coffee with more or less milk. After some contemplation of the disgusting state of our hallway walls I opted for less milk. The colour need to be strong like a good coffee should to stand up to what Bumble Bee Cottage would throw its way. Eight hours of painting later and it is finished - hooray!

It is only after looking at this photo I have noticed the loved finger smears on the top mirror. I knew there was a smiley face drawn in spit on the one at the bottom of the stairs but had totally missed the lovely artwork further up the stair case; although this one does look more like general finger smears than spit! My money is on B1 or B2 for the spit art as B3 is too short to reach. Such sweet little cherubs :P I will whip out the Windex when I am finished this post and remove all evidence of the grottier side to Bumble Bee Cottage.

The plan is to remove the carpet and have painters come and paint the staircase white ( I do not do enamel painting). I will then see if I can order a carpet runner I have seen in Country Living magazine and get those lovely brass rods to hold in in place on the stairs.

The new wall colour does make the maroon carpet slightly more tolerable. It does not seem to dominate quite so much with the coffee as it did with the cream walls.

Our hallway before; as you can see by all the hooks I have been trying out the blue plates to see how they will look.

I was worried that the darker coffee colour made the hallway look too small but after 'sleeping' on it I have decided that it was the right decision after all, that coupled with Mr Bee saying how much he liked the new colour.

I am so pleased with my blue and white plates. The most expensive and the oldest one is the Willow pattern dinner plate which I bought from the curio/antique shop at The Bridge. It is a Victorian plate made by Bovey Tracey Pottery of Devon. They manufactured between 1842 and 1898. Coming from Australia where we have only just over two hundred years of European based history that makes this plate seem very old to me indeed. I paid the extravagant sum of £6.00 for this little beauty. Some of the other plates are from charity shops and some are from Ebay; even when I include the postage none cost me more than £6.00.

This fine gentleman was £0.99 from Ebay. I am so annoyed at myself as there was a matching lady to accompany him but someone had outbid me. I meant to go back later and up my bid but I totally forgot so now he is destined to a life as a bachelor.

My rosy vase was £1.00 from one of The Bridge charity shops. It is chipped here and there and has some type of cream paint splattered on it but you hardly notice and I love it.

My blue bowl was £2.00. Eventually I will get a plate stand for this so you can see the pattern more easily as you enter the house. The next painting project is to paint the hall stand white.

As I was taking the after photos for this post I found the first chip on the staircase wall. I kid you not! It did not even survive 24 hours until my whirlwinds of destruction had managed to sully my perfect coffee canvas. Which one of the little twerps did it is anyone's guess. Does it really matter? I suppose not as I have half a litre of paint left for the occasional touch ups. At least I have photographic evidence of how nice it looked before it was Bumble Bee'd ;P

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At the suggestion of a few of my blogging friends I have added this post to Between Naps on the Porch's Metamorphosis Monday. Thankyou to Susan for hosting it. Please click on the link to see lots of other transformations.