We’ve done an awful lot of work on our house in the three years that we’ve been here. However, one area that remained the same was the hall. It was an uninteresting light peach. Gross! Not only that, one of the door frames (which is now door free) was pretty badly damaged and needed repair. Also, the front of our house is incredibly dark, while the back of the house gets all the light. So whatever we needed to do, it had to maximise the tiny amount of light that it got.

I started off adding layers of wood filler to the damaged wood frame. I’m so annoyed that I didn’t take a before & after picture, because the change is quite dramatic. You’d never be able to tell where it was damaged now! For the colour scheme, all we wanted was something light. We’ve used light reflecting paint in other parts of the house, but we aren’t convinced it makes any difference. Plus, it’s more expensive than normal paint. So we went with a plain old white paint for the walls. We didn’t want the woodwork to be white, so went with a light grey. After the first coat of the light grey, it was obvious that it was too light & it just didn’t work. So I headed back to Homebase and got some of their own brand Dove Grey and it’s just the ticket. We also painted the back of the front door in a bid to make the hall feel lighter. It wasn’t painted before, so was a dark brown and seemed to make the hall feel even darker. It’s made a massive difference to how the hall feels.

Ideally, we’d like to replace the door with one that has a bigger window, but we’ve run out of money! So we’re stuck with this one for a while longer. As you can see in the picture, the walls are artexed. A previous owner really, really, really loved that look and most of the walls were covered in it. When we moved in we needed a damp course so got some of the walls replastered. But as funds are tight, replastering the hall and other parts where it remains are not a priority so we’re stuck with it!

I still haven’t found the perfect lampshade for the hall, but I’ll keep looking. The important thing is that we’ve given it a fresh look, made it lighter and got rid of the hideous peach that was there before. We’ve put our stamp on every room in the house now, as much as we can anyway. Now we’re looking around at the rooms we did when we first moved in and thinking about how much we’d like to change them. We’re saving hard to rebuild our DIY funds so until then there’s not much we can do. Unless we win the lottery of course!