It’s a wonder that we ever bought our house because the hallway is all wrong. The stairs come down straight to the front door. Literally. You can come down the stairs and with one foot on the bottom step you can have another foot out of the front door. From a Feng shui point of view it couldn’t be more wrong. Add to that the fact there is a gas meter box right behind the door so you can’t open it fully, meaning that you have to breathe in to get past the end of the stairs and you have some idea of how cramped it is. It drives me nuts. Regularly.
I often find myself staring at tiled floors in people’s homes, you know, the mosaic beautifully patterned ones, and Mr B will look at me and say “you have floor envy again, haven’t you?” Yes, yes I have. I thought our deep red carpet was a good idea at the time but ten years later, a dog, two cats and all of us constantly walking up and down it and I am really regretting it.
Which means it is now on my hit list. After we rip out our bathroom early next year I am going to be moving on to the hallway. Completely ripping it out and starting again. I am even considering how easy it is to turn staircases around. Can you do that? Would that be weird?
So this is what I am thinking are the top things I need to create the hallway of dreams. Starting off with the flooring of course. A beautiful mosaic like then one photographed by Annie in Morocco, as seen above.
Next we probably need to think about a mirror to reflect some light (having also painted the walls something a bit brighter than the dull magnolia they are currently). Are white walls really impractical?
Then I need all the storage. The dumping ground under our stairs is shocking and every now and again I consider boxing it all in. You know, like the ones you often see on Pinterest that has a cute dog kennel built into it. Except that would make the place too dark so I am looking at getting as much clever storage as I can into such a small space. Starting with something like this from the Holding Company. Not that many of our friends have hats but we do have “stuff” that needs to live in the hall and I am thinking this row of hooks with a little shelf above would be ideal as it not only looks good but does the job too.
Though what we really need is some shoe storage. Four of us with at least three or four pairs of each. (Some of us have waaaaaaaay more than that < cough > ) and you are talking about a seriously messy pile of shoes. A pile that gets thrown into the hall way when someone can’t find the pair they are looking for (and then invariably never really puts them all back.
So I am thinking something like this. This would fit under our stairs brilliantly and even the oldest pair of shoes would look tidy in there, wouldn’t it? If we had more space I would think about getting some additional shoe racks but I think we would then be in danger of completely filling what floor space we do have.
How about you, have you got any clever ideas to share on how we can make our hall feel lighter and brighter?