Painting the Back Hallway

Ahh, baby poop brown!

What, that doesn't sound appealing to you?

Well, does it LOOK appealing?

We didn't pay much attention to the colors of the house when we moved in--probably because the two back bedrooms were painted Barbie pink, a truly horrendous shade, and we painted over those before we even moved in. I guess, in comparison, the other colors of the house seemed harmless. 

(This is a shot of the hall from the living room.)

But as we've settled in and started our own touch-ups, including taking the bathroom down to a more soothing green, we started disliking the colors of the entire house. I can get to those later, but for now, I'll just quote Mr. Cheddar: "I can't believe they had a brown hallway going back to two pink bedrooms and an olive-pea green bathroom."

Every time I went to vacuum that hallway, I was struck by the BROWN of it all. Beige carpet, brown walls, orange lights, it all felt so BLAH.

So after weeks and weeks of wearing down Mr. Cheddar (who eventually was more on my side than I was, insisting the hallway was nothing more than a disaster) we finally went and bought primer and a couple of new rollers.

And I set to work!

After one coat of paint, I was exhausted, so my helpful Hubby volunteered to do the roller painting even though I'd promised him I'd do all the painting myself. I did all the trim of the second coat.

Are you ready for this reveal?

*angels singing*

After we were done (it was around 1:30 AM when we actually finished but I waited for daylight to do progress photos) I sat back and admired my work. I was pretty darn proud of the difference in the hallway already--it seemed longer, brighter, and more cheerful. Even the glimpse of it from the living room was better than the previous brown.

(A shot from the back of the hallway.)

But the next morning, Mr. Cheddar was standing there contemplating the hallway and finally couldn't stand it anymore. "I don't like the white walls with the white trim, white doors, and white ceiling." I said I was sorry, and that I still liked it better than the brown, but that he would have to learn to live with it for the next couple of weeks until we could budget for some paint with color.

This was unacceptable to him. So instead, we vowed to "eat cheap" this week (no frills, no takeout, frozen veggies instead of fresh, that sort of thing) and go spend the $35 on a can of paint.

So off to Lowes we went!

We chose "Woodsmoke," which is an Eddie Bauer color for Valspar Signature. We went through every gray on the spectrum--warm grays, cool grays, yellow grays, violet grays, light grays, you get the idea. We were in there for a loooong time narrowing down our options. I kept holding onto the Woodsmoke color swatch; I loved the richness and the tone and thought it would look perfect as a strong neutral in the hallway.

After we bought it (and LOTS of Frog Tape since I was going to have to tape everything this time!) I started painting the next day.

(Well, first I Frog-Taped that hallway like a boss. I turned on the Phineas and Ferb movie on my iPhone, which was playing from the bathroom as I worked, and it took the entirety of that movie PLUS an episode of Downton Abbey before I was done Frog-Taping.)

I was ooohing and aaaahing as soon as I started rolling on the color. 

It dried darker than it looked like it would, too, which was even prettier than I expected.

I listened to a few Parks and Recreation episodes along with three Psych episodes before I was finally done painting the whole hallway. This time I finished around midnight.

IT'S SO PRETTY! I'm in love! It's the perfect color to lead into the light blue bedrooms and the seafoam-green bathroom, and with better lighting it would look a million times better. That's not really in the cards for us though.

To save you from scrolling up, here is a comparison:

My favorite part was changing the transition from the living room to the hallway as well. Before, the faux-pillars framing the hallway were painted all red, and behind them, the brown started. But the faux-pillars had undergone a lot of damage from the previous owners moving out, and we didn't have any paint to touch it up. So I made the decision to pull the gray out into the archway.

I LOVE the look of the gray peeking out and framing the hallway, I think it gives it an unexpected depth and sophistication. All I was really trying to do was cover the deep scratches but I'm pleased with how it turned out.

However, the BEST news to come out of this post is that this hallway is actually still a work-in-progress!

See this end-of-the-hall alcove?

I have BIG plans for this alcove, which I'm starting work on later today!

In an ideal world, I'd also be touching up the trim (the floor trims are practically yellow) and thinking about ceiling color options, but I don't need practice with painting trim the way I needed practice with redoing an entire hallway, and that's really what all of these painting-a-rental-house-that-doesn't-belong-to-me projects have been all about--the experience. Of COURSE I'd love to be more complete, but for now, I'm looking forward to working on this alcove.

So what do you think? Were you partial to the baby poop brown?

(Now that it's gone, I can admit that the color itself wasn't bad--it was a rich, lovely color--but it was misused. It was not meant for a narrow space, and it was definitely not meant to be paired with beige carpets. So good riddance to misused paint!)