The Hallway Project

Here is what our back hallway looked like when we bought this house.

 

The hallway of doors right?  Just to the right, just off camera is another door to the laundry room.  The door on the left is the garage, the door straight ahead is an office and the door to the right of the office is a bathroom.  This hall leads you to the kitchen.  It felt super cramped and dark.  My brain was scheming from day one.  We even had a contractor here about the kitchen update (which we ended up doing ourselves instead - shocking, I know).  I asked him about opening up the closet and doing a bench and hooks like a mini mudroom.  He teased me that since I was from Texas, that I didn't understand that I'd need a coat closet here.  No!  Really?  I didn't spend my entire life in Texas, plus we wore coats there occasionally too.  Not to mention the coat closet in the entry of the house and all the ginormous closets in all of the bedrooms.  We have plenty of places to put our coats.

 

Other projects came first however, but I kept dreaming of doing something in this hall.  I painted the trim and the walls a lighter color first.  For a year and a half, I've heard myself say at least a million times "shut the closet doors when you're done back there".  They never do!  Over Christmas break we got lots of snow which led to lots of opening - never shutting by anyone other than myself - of those dang closet doors. I decided to just take the doors off and see how that felt for a while.  This got Corey thinking.  I showed him inspiration pictures and he finally got on board.  That very day he went to Home Depot to get all the materials.

 

Here's a shot after we removed the doors.  What a mess!  I had hung hooks along the back where we kept backpacks and coats, but most of our children are too short to hang their own stuff, so most things ended up on the floor on top of all that shoe mess.  Some coats hung on the rod too.  And there in the corner, the mass of brooms, mops and dusting type things.

 

  

 

We cleared everything out and removed the shelving and hardware.  Here are some pictures of what inspired me before we began. The first is purely in my fantasy world. 

 

The next is from houseofsmiths.com.  Her project was pretty much identical to what we wanted to do.  We decided not to open up drywall though since ours was a double door closet.  It is big enough to just remove the doors and leave all the existing molding in place.  Plus someone could put the doors back on if they decided that they like to constantly run into open doors in a tight hallway.





  

 

The next picture gave me the brilliant idea to make the seat out of wood instead of painting it white.  The kids would be standing on it to hang coats and get stuff, so I knew it would take a beating.

 

 

So we got to work.  Corey started with the bench.  We bought a piece of oak which was the most expensive part of the project.  I stained it a weathered gray before he installed it.  We decided to just go with open storage underneath.  I like that the kids can just kick their shoes under the bench.  I can always add baskets if it gets out of control.  Above the bench the texture on the walls is funny, so we added thin sheets of plywood to cover the wavy texture.  Here one piece has a coat of paint and the other just got attached.   



 



 

Next we started adding the board and batten strips.  You can see Corey was installing faster than I could paint. 

 





 

Fast forward!  I got busy painting and didn't take more pics.  Corey built the shelf.  I thought it'd be nice to have a place for the kids to put their daily school homework and junk.  One step closer to clean counters?  Perhaps.  Here he is installing the hooks that I bought at Home Depot. 

 

 

 

I used Annie Sloan's dark furniture wax on the oak.  It protects it and makes it look a little more aged at the same time.

 

 



 

 And less than 2 days later.  Ta da! 

 

 

Here's what it's always going to look like.  Just my cute purse that Corey bought me for Christmas and one coat.  RIGHT!!! 

 

 

 

Here's what it really looks like.

 



 

 

 

Ahhhh!  So much better, brighter, lighter and more functional.  The best part?  No more griping about the closet doors being left open.

 

We have plans for making the most of the open space at the top of the closet too.  The space is open all the way up to the ceiling of the hallway too.  We'd put a shelf just above those baskets and open up the drywall above.  We'd add molding and maybe cabinet doors to hide stuff.  It would require a chair to reach stuff, but we could use it for things that you don't need very often.  We are also going to install board and batten on the hallway walls and crown molding on the ceiling.

 



 

So that's what we did over Christmas break.  It only took a day and a half maybe.  It cost a couple hundred dollars.  It's already changed my world.