For the record...

...let it be known that today I finished hanging the doors on our kitchen cabinets.

Yes, it only took seven months for me to finish that project.

Huzzah!

Mirror, mirror...

Next in the continuing adventures of Sean and Lindsey's back entryway...

With paint done, it was time to think about decor.  It's such a small space that I knew we'd have to be very careful how we organized it.  As much as I would love a beautiful entryway bench with hooks and shelves and the whole nine yards, we just don't have room for it.  What I knew we did need was a lot of hooks.

I did some searching online and found this beautiful piece at Pottery Barn:

There were just a couple of problems.  First, it's $259.  Also, I measured and it's waaaaaay too big for our space.  So strikeout on both fronts.

Then a brilliant idea dawned on me.  When we first moved into the house, we went around and basically tore everything off the walls that we could, because it was all hideous.  It got thrown into a big pile in the basement and we haven't gotten around to sorting through it all yet.  (I'm guessing half will go in the trash and the other half will go to Goodwill.)

So, one short archaeological expedition later, I had our solution:

There had already been a mirror with hooks in that hallway when we moved in.  I just took it down because it had that awful teal from the kitchen on it and it was ugly.

But, I was inspired and wanted to see what we could do with what we already had, and so began my little project.

Step one: remove pegs.

I was really hoping they were screwed into the frame, but they weren't--they were glued in.  A little wiggling and I was able to pry them out, though.

Step two: wood fill.

I ended up doing two passes; one to fill in as much as I could, then sand, then another to fill in any left over cracks, then sand again.  I also sanded down the rest of the frame around the mirror to get it ready for painting.

Step three: prime and paint.

SO much better already, right?  I used some old primer we had from past projects, and then gave it two solid coats in the same white that we used on our kitchen cabinets and trim.

The problem came when I took the tape off the mirror:

It was a total mess.  I did a terrible job of not painting the tape (obviously) so there was a lot still stuck on there.

However, I now know that an x-acto knife can fix just about anything.  Fifteen minutes of scraping carefully, and it looked good as new.  I also gave it a really good wiping down with some Windex to get all of the tape goo off.

Finally, it was time for the hardware!  I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted on there yet, so I picked up a couple of different sets of hooks at Target.

I'd used these hooks before in a closet, and they're great--inexpensive and sturdy.  I opened both packages so I could play around with the layout, figuring that whatever I didn't use for the mirror would still find a use somewhere else down the line (we can ALWAYS use more hooks in our closets!).

This was too many...it looked crowded and it might be hard to take things on and off the hooks.

This was my second favorite...not bad, but it only gave us four hooks to use.

This ended up being the winner!  It looked balanced, there was plenty of room, and we had six hanging places.

I couldn't wait to hang it up.  It was a little nerve wracking drilling into our plaster (I decided to drill, then use an anchor and screw to hang it) but it feels very secure and our hallway is finally functional!

Grand total for the project: about $6 for the hooks. We already had everything else.  Beats $259, huh?  I wish we had the little drawers that the Pottery Barn mirror had, but the entryway is so small, I'm afraid they would stick out too far and take up valuable space.  This works well enough for us, and Sean has already taken over it with all of his stuff.

Action shot!

While I was at it, I also hung a small set of hooks on the opposite wall near the door, to give us a place to hang coats and jackets. (Also from Target!)

And there was one other major change that needed to be done (if you haven't already caught it yet)...did I ever post a picture of the ugly mushroom light fixture?  No?  Just in case, here it is...er, WAS...

And here it is now:

Yay for BETTER!

(The story of replacing the light fixtures is a whole 'nother story for a whole 'nother post.  Basically, it took much longer than we had anticipated, thanks to our old wiring, but once we got it figured out it wasn't too bad.  We replaced this light and also both of the lights in the upstairs hallway.  They were about $25 for 4 at Home Depot, so it was a cheap fix and we still have one extra left over...in case one breaks?)

And so ends phase one of our back hallway improvement.  We're still not totally done, but what's left can wait or become part of other, bigger projects:

• Get one more rug for the landing by the kitchen
• Replace flooring (it's the same bad vinyl as in the kitchen, so that will all happen at once)
• Build cover for radiator
• Clean up back doorway...I did a deep clean on the inside, but the outside is filthy so that will wait until it's a little warmer outside
• Find cool artwork to hang on remaining wall...I'm open to ideas!

Hallway Heaven...or Hell?

Well, faithful readers, I'm a little farther behind than I had hoped, but progress is being made.  After returning back from our winter break, I decided to tackle a smaller, but nonetheless extremely important, project.

Our back hallway is probably the most heavily trafficked space in our whole house.  It's the hallway that leads to the back door, which opens out onto our little patio and gets you to the garage.  So, it's really the ONLY door we use to go in and out of the house all the time.

Now, I should pause for a moment to explain: "hallway" is probably a generous term for this space.  It's really just two small landings, each about three and a half feet square.  The first space is right off of the kitchen, and then there's a step down to the smaller landing that connects to the back door and the stairway going down to the basement.

In fact, it's such a small space that I just realized I've never posted a picture of it on this blog.  Probably because it's a very hard space to photograph...because it's so small.  Here's one bad attempt (excuse my terrible photography...I promise I'm getting better, but you wouldn't get that from looking at these photos!):

Blurry photo looking towards the back door...if you look closely under my paint tarp, you can see where the step is.

Somewhat less blurry photo looking straight on at it from the kitchen.

When we moved in, this "hallway" was just plain old white.  And by that I mean plain...OLD...white.  It was pretty dirty and beat up looking.  One of the walls (which you can't see in this photo) was the same color teal as the rest of the kitchen, so when we painted the kitchen walls we primed over that.  It's been sitting there ever since, waiting for us to have time to paint it (and figure out what color it should be).

We also thought we should paint the wall in the basement staircase that same color, since it all basically connects.  It had also been primed (it used to be the ugly living room purple-taupe) but was waiting for it's final coats of paint.

Looking down into the basement, also blurry...please ignore the mess at the bottom of the stairs.

I ended up deciding on the same beige that we have in our upstairs staircase/hallway.  I was hesitant at first because I wasn't sure how it would look right next to the yellow.  However, I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  It just fades into the background as a neutral and the yellow really pops.

Voila...finished paint job!

I'm still not tired of how satisfying it is to put a fresh coat of paint on a wall.  It looks SO much nicer having the beige in there.  It sets off the white trim and makes the house look more polished.

Speaking of the trim, it was an absolute mess, so that was the next thing I tackled.  Here's the "before" shots:

This was how most of it looked.

Door frame...yikes!

They'd added the trim at the bottom and never painted it.  The mess is where I'd filled in the hole from the door stopper, pre-sanding.

 A few fresh coats of white paint (same color as the kitchen cabinets, Alabaster) and voila:

Ignore the dirty floor...winter!

I did take time to sand everything down a bit, but wasn't going to go too crazy.  It's the back entryway, and it's going to get beat up.  There's still a lot of dings and scratches, but it looks much better now and it's going to get a lot of abuse.  I figure it's an area that will need a lot of touching up in the future.

While I was at it, I painted some of the trim in the kitchen, too:

Before (scuffed up)

Brody, get out of the way...

After!  Much better.

So, round one of the transformation is complete!  I've already made progress on a few round two projects...which I'll save for another post, another day.