After eight long years we have finally, finally, FINALLY painted the upstairs hallway. It is done! No more builder paint and scratchy flat walls scraping up my knuckles when I move laundry baskets. Can you hear the Hallelujah Chorus singing in the background? I would do cartwheels if I thought it wouldn't cause serious injury. The color is Burnished Clay by Behr. It's a light gray with a hint of blue to it. It's the same color we used in the bonus room, and is a definite change over the gold and white combo we had going on before. (Half of the hallway was painted before. The other half was still white builder paint. Classy, I know.)
It took us forever to repaint because there are some high ceilings in the stairway and the best way to paint those high corners was not always obvious. But with some pole wielding and ladder maneuvering, we made it happen.
The thing about this space is there is no natural light. The only light that it gets is from the bedroom windows. If the bedroom doors are shut, the hallway is dark. So I picked the gold eight years ago thinking it would help keep things bright. And it certainly did cast a gold glow on everything. EVERYTHING.
Here it is midway through. You can see how the gold wall (left) casts a gold glow on the gray wall (right) so that you can't even tell it's not gold. Maybe I should consider a new kind of brighter white light bulb in there. But honestly, I have no idea how we'd get to it. Fourteen feet up in the middle of a stairwell. I fear the day that bulb burns out.
We've done the entire upstairs hallway, and the stairwell, and one small wall in the downstairs hallway. So we do have more of the downstairs hallway to do. This is more like a few hour job than a weekend job, though. Lots of cutting in and not a lot of wall space.
Now that the walls are a much cooler color, I'm looking forward to adding some more pops of color somehow. I'm thinking of doing some kind of timeline on the walls that has the history of our family... from our first date up to now. Maybe?
I do like the new color, and I'm debating just going for it in the family room too. (It is also gold/yellow.) We'll see. I'll probably just live with for a while, because we all know how efficient I am at getting these painting projects done!
