An Exciting New Project!

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It’s fair to say that we usually have a lot of home improvement projects on the go. Currently we’re plastering and repainting part of our dining room after having bi-fold doors installed, we’re trying to finish off the remaining work in our cellar where we have a new concrete floor, we’re working on installing a new driveway and are planning our decked area in the garden.

With all of that going on you’d think that there’s no room for more projects, but not being able to resist the allure of tackling something new, we’ve decided to finally give our hallway a much needed makeover.

We know that it doesn’t look too bad on the photos we share, especially when you consider that this is what it looked like when we moved in!

Yep, brown walls and a green ceiling are definitely an interesting design choice.

In reality though we’ve not actually done that much to the space, except of course for our staircase makeover which took forever! Okay, so maybe not quite forever, but 250 hours! of stripping, sanding and painting definitely felt like it! (You can read about our staircase refurbishment here)

Yes, we sanded the floors and painted everywhere white, but that’s about as far as it goes.

The new door to the kitchen (we moved the existing door when we removed the wall between the kitchen and dining room) still hasn’t been finished off, the steel beam hasn’t been boxed in and worst of all the walls are in a bit of a miserable Artex covered state.

I’m not sure why anyone would ever think that Artex is a good idea, but ours is particularly bad as in parts it’s also flaking off the wall.

Well, enough is enough. It’s time that we finally gave this house the hallway that it deserves.

The overall plan is to create a welcoming and calm entry. We’ll be sticking to soft neutral colours (probably Cornforth White by Farrow & Ball) as most of the rooms leading off it have coloured walls and we don’t want to create a clash between the different spaces.

We’re also thinking about wallpapering under the dado rail and think that a paper with texture or pattern would add some subtle interest without being overpowering. Alternatively (and more likely) we’ll continue the wood panelling that we installed on the staircase wall here, too.

Overall we’re not planning huge design changes. For us it’s more about finally finishing things off and achieving a high-quality result that we’ll be happy with. The biggest change for us will probably be having lovely smooth walls. I can’t wait for the Artex to disappear, but we have another trick up our sleeves – we’ll be plastering with Thistle Magnetic Plaster by British Gypsum’s Rooms Made For You Range!

If you’ve not already heard of magnetic plaster it’s an amazing new type of plaster (we got a chance to test it at an event last year) that provides a wall surface that will attract magnets. It worked amazingly well in the demonstration, so it will be interesting to see how well it works in real life!

You know that we struggle to make up our minds, so having a wall that we can frequently update and an area where we can chop and change things as and when we feel like it without having to knock tonnes of holes in our walls is perfect for us.

We already have a memo board in the hallway where we display random bits and pieces, but it does tend to get messy and cluttered, so having a full wall where we can get creative is going to be amazing.

In terms of furnishing the room we still love our DIY hallway bench and we’ll definitely be keeping it, but we would like a new console table and a new lamp to go with it. Something with drawers would be ideal as there always seems to be some sort of junk and clutter in our hallway that could do with hiding away.

Admittedly we’re still struggling to agree on and finalize the design of the hallway. What colours do you think we should use? We’re also still on the lookout for the perfect console table – any suggestions? Have you ever used magnetic plaster?