We moved into our house almost two years ago now. We decorated Toby and Gabe’s room just before we moved in and then completely replaced the kitchen after just a few months. But since then our redecoration plans rather ground to a halt, mostly due to lack of funds. Just before Christmas (I know, it’s taken a while for me to write about it!) though we decided to try and give our hall way a makeover on a budget.

We didn’t want to spend a fortune as it’s likely we will need to redecorate again when we finally get round to our long term plans of converting our roof space. If you’ve watched my house tour video then you’ll know that we live in a house that looks like a bungalow from the front but is three stories at the back, so we have stairs going both up and down from the entrance hall.

When we moved in the hall was dark and gloomy – I really didn’t like the brick wall or seat but at the moment removing them was too much of a big job.

I took these pictures when we had already started decorating so it all looks clear and tidy but mostly that bench seat was just a dumping ground for bags and coats, we didn’t have enough space for coats and shoes and the carpet was worn and dirty.

The walls were a grubby magnolia colour, and the lights were in need of replacing. We couldn’t afford to replace all the carpet or change the light fittings completely but we were able to make some changes to give our hallway a makeover on a budget.

First up was painting all the walls – which was a really quite a big job. Barry and Dad got to work and managed to do all the painting over a long weekend. We used Polished Pebble from Dulux which is a pale grey colour.

We also painted the exposed bricks with masonry paint (that was my job!) – we used B&Q Colours masonry paint in Storm Grey for the bricks. It was a fiddly job to get in all the nooks and crannies but I’m so pleased with the result.

 

Where the bench seat was we removed the plywood lid and replaced it with some leftover oak worktop from our kitchen. Ideally we would like to remove this brick corner box at some point and perhaps replace it with some built in storage, but for now this is much better than it was.

We put an IKEA Kallax unit on top of the old box  – I don’t know about you but we love these for storage in our house, we’ve got loads of them! In here are all the bags, hats and gloves, along with all our camera equipment and other random bits and bobs that have nowhere else to live.

We also replaced the coat hooks and put some low ones up for the boys so they can hang their own coats up (in theory!). We used to cheap IKEA shoe racks that we already had, screwed them together one on top of each other and painted them with Rustoleum chalk paint in Mineral Grey. I also used this paint for the step up into the garage that you can see in the above picture, and for the wood around the brick storage box too.

On top of the shoe rack I’ve popped a grey storage box that I got from Dunelm – there is one section each for Toby and Gabe, and one for me and Barry. We use it to store the hats and gloves we are currently using – the boys can put their own in their box when they come in, and it means we have less searching for missing things when I’m trying to get them out of the door in the morning.

We replaced the lampshades both up and downstairs with some cheap grey ones from B&Q. If we weren’t on such a budget then I would definitely have gone for something more like one of these pendant lights from lights.ie – especially upstairs where there is a high ceiling and plenty of room for more of a statement light.

The main expense other than the cost of paint was replacing some of the floor. We couldn’t afford to replace all the carpet in the hall and on the stairs, and actually the carpet on the stairs wasn’t looking too bad. So instead we just replaced the carpet on the middle floor with vinyl flooring in a floorboard effect. I hate doormats that are always moving around and are just asking to be tripped over, so instead we opted to have heavy duty matting being fitted inside the front door as you can see on the picture above.

The last few finishing touches were new curtains on the landing – I picked some that had grey and green to try and tie the new walls with the existing carpet. We also replaced the curtain pole with a plain one, again from B&Q.

The final change in the hall is probably my favourite. I had seen metal grid noticeboards a lot online but they were all quite small and some were very expensive for what you got. I had seen some people recommend using gridwall – which is what shops use do display their products. I got all of the things you can see here (which is two gridwall panels, two baskets, several hooks and loads of bulldog clips to attache things to the boards) from a shopfitting suppliers on eBay for about £70! I love it so much – as well as using it for a calendar and all those letters from school, we also use it to display the boys’ artwork, to keep things like pens and paper handy, to hang our door and car keys, and there are a few decorative items on there too.

There’s still a few things we need to do to really finish off our hallway makeover – like replace the light switches so they all match, give all the skirting and door frames a fresh coat of white paint, and possibly do something with the banisters too. It’s so much better than it was though and I’m really glad we decided to give our hallway a makeover on a budget. I didn’t actually add it up but I think, including the flooring, we did the whole job for under £500.

I just can’t wait to get started on our next project now!

 

**This post is in association with lights.ie