Painting the hallway

Painting the hallway

This should be a post about how I have painted the hallway, kitchen and pantry. Instead it’s a post about how I used the holidays, Andy’s flu and our recent cold weather as excuses to do almost nothing around the house in weeks.

This is also a post about how one decision can lead to other decisions that you had no idea needed to be made. You didn’t know this blog was so philosophical, did you? Well, here’s what happened, and this might get long… so I apologize in advance.

Before we even started our big kitchen reno project, we already had an idea of what we wanted to do color-wise in there when it was done. We knew we wanted to paint most of the kitchen a real light grey and the one sort of empty wall (the wall that has the back door and pantry door but no cabinets) with black chalkboard paint. Ok, easy.

So then as we discussed (and discussed and discussed because I can be really annoying when it comes to this) what color to also paint the “new” bathroom, we ultimately decided that we thought a deep charcoal-y grey would be a nice, dramatic complement to the black and white tile on the floor. Ok, decision made. (You saw a sneak peek of the nearly finished product here.)

What you need to know now is that between the kitchen and the bathroom is a small hallway that is currently painted really bright yellow with shiny black trim. Like seriously, so bright (not to be confused with the yellow in our entry which is a different shade). It’s an accidental homage to the bumblebee, or maybe the Steelers, but either way the yellow was a huge mistake (all my fault). The black trim was there when we moved in and we didn’t find it offensive enough to care about painting it.

Well, then this is what kept me up at night, literally: so if you walked in our back door, through the kitchen to the bathroom, you’d see, first, black chalkboard wall followed by black trim in the hallway, and finally charcoal grey bathroom walls. Um, goth much? No offense to goths everywhere. I mean, I’m ok with black paint obviously, but three rooms in a row? Besides, the black trim, when I really started to think about it, well, it’s not good. In a different space, black trim is cool. Here, it’s just dark and gloomy. And bee-y.

So then I made the decision to paint the trim in the hallway white. Kind of a pain and primer annoys me, especially when I know I’ll need multiple coats, but trim is a relatively easy project, as far as painting jobs go. Waaay better than painting a ceiling, but, still, it’s not as much fun as, say, watching TV.

Here’s some pictures of the hallway so you know what I’m talking about.

Looking in from the kitchen:

Holy yellow.

Looking in from the rumpus/TV room towards the bathroom:

Here’s the trim after one coat of primer (always the ugliest stage):

After the second coat of primer:

What a difference! Even though this is still just primer, the trim looks a million times better white than black. Ignore the black doors. They’ll get painted separately later when we have time to take them all of their hinges. The bathroom door, at least, will probably have to wait until we have a finished bathroom upstairs because, well, we need a bathroom door.

I’m so glad our decision to make the bathroom a dark color led us to make the decision to paint this trim white. While the yellow still looks pretty horrendous, it’s all going to be so nice when the whole thing is done. Our plan is to probably paint the walls the same color as the kitchen, so it feels like a continuous open space. We may decide to go rogue, though, so who knows.

Next up: more priming in the kitchen and pantry, and then painting the trim in all three rooms (plus the bathroom), painting the ceilings, and painting all the walls. No big deal, right? Sigh.