DECORATING A HALLWAY

August 17, 2020

Hallways are kind of forgotten because they are mostly just passages and sometimes decor mind space and planning is dedicated to rooms where people sit down and stay awhile. But this makeover has reminded me hallways are very visible. Maybe this is just a little second floor landing, but with a good light fixture and some vintage art, it makes the whole house feel nicer. When we moved into this house, this area had pink-white walls, a little bit of wallpaper, and not one, but two carpets.

A brown in the hall itself and inside the closet a green shag.

First, we added a laundry space in the closet – you can see the details on that renovation here.

To begin (at the VERY beginning) we installed wood floors. A true white paint as opposed to the old off-colored one did a lot.

Then I did a trustworthy decorating formula I’ve observed myself gravitating to MANY TIMES. A great light fixture with personality, a vintage persian rug, and some beautiful art. With a nice paint color, sometimes that’s all it takes.

Good flush mounts are hard to find! Also hallways don’t often have much furniture so I think that is a room to especially get a good fixture for the place to infuse some detail. We went with the armstrong three light flush mount in matte white from kichler. We put it on a dimmer too and it is wonderful for moving about in the evenings.

I love to pass through this room now! It is visible from many parts of the house – all the bedrooms, as well as the stairwell and entryway. I am considering this a case study that hallways are worth decorating!

We used the same light fixture in our completed master bath renovation here.

CHOOSING A HONED MARBLE HEX TILE

August 3, 2020

Rachel Schultz

We have arrived at what feels like an enormous turning point for the bathroom and the star of it is the new marble tile!! It is just so completely a WORK OF ART. When we started, I knew I wanted a marble in here. I love the refined feel and beauty of the natural stone. And a carrara style marble I am drawn to every time I see it. From there, we had some decisions to make about the different types and styles of marble. Some of the main decisions were honed versus polished, size of the hex tile, and different veining looks.

Personally I love honed marble. Polished has a more reflective finish, closer to a shiny porcelain tile. One good thing about polished is it is easy to wipe done. Honed has a more matte finish, and almost all the time I really like a more matte of anything. Unless the object is MEANT TO be a really dramatic high gloss, lacquered look as a statement or feature, I prefer as matte as possible. Honed marbles strikes me as having such depth and seems authentic, aged, and rich.

Another reason we opted for honed is this is a floor application, and it can be much less slippery when wet than polished. (Although the large amount of grout with hex tiles would help with that.)

@flooranddecor, mood improver

I really love hex tile. It feels historic to me, but can still be found at good prices. The next fun decision was between two inch or one inch hexes. I went with one inch because I like the small scale pattern.

My only concern with doing one inch hexes was that the veining wouldn’t be as noticeable, and I like a pretty veined look.

I shopped at floor & decor who has a lot of selection and they also offer free design services for anyone. The tile we chose was the carrara white hexagon marble mosaic. IT CHECKED ALL MY BOXES and was at the lowest price I have seen. I was very satisfied with how noticeable the veining and color variance was once all the tiles were laid out across an entire room. As with many things, the pattern comes to life much better on the broad scale than when looking at only an individual piece, in this case a 12 x 12 inch square of tile.

One question I got frequently last time I shared about using a hex tile was if they are all laid individually and the amazing and convenient answer is definitely no! They come in 12 x 12 inch squares of tile and are easy to move around corners because you can pop out the shapes you don’t need and then trim the mesh on the underside with scissors. We did this whole project without using a wet saw. All we needed was some tile nippers to cut some hexes in half along the edges. This is another one of the great things about hex tile.

The installation was HONESTLY FUN and represents moving closer to our finished master bath! I love using high quality, natural materials. Especially when decorating with neutrals, the natural beauty becomes such a feature in a room. I feel like this tile would look good with TRULY ANY wall color – including something bold, or simply white.

The post about our finished master bathroom is now here.

PAINTING A CLOSET NAVY BLUE

July 27, 2020

David Schultz

For a long time the closet in our master bedroom was an afterthought. It was functional; it held clothes. But the walls were dinged up, scuffed, and bland. I am glad I am married to Rachel who sees a boring closet and finds joy in improving it to make our home more pleasant for everyone. We recently painted our added laundry closet a very dark green and ended up with a similar hue here, but in the blue tones. (This color is behr “ink black” at 85%). Deep colors seem to make things look their best.

That is a good set up for a closet full of colorful dresses on her side and some less interesting blue dress shirts on my side.

A project like this typically takes one night, so that is fun for a Friday evening at home.

I recently got a paint sprayer from graco, and it can be a great tool for something like this. The thing about sprayers is once you tape up some plastic sheeting on any areas you want to protect, the actual painting is quick.

It is ideal for painting pieces like doors too, because an even coat is applied around the little nooks and seams. I have painted a handful of six-panel doors with brushes and rollers, and it can be difficult to end up with a smooth finish on the entire surface.

Before owning one, my main hesitation about paint sprayers was the clean up of the actual machine. How can something that has paint constantly flowing through its tubes and filters ever get un-painty?

Blast water through it is the answer!

The sprayer we have came with a little attachment that you hook up to a garden hose and connect to the same tube that feeds paint into the machine. When you are ready to clean up, you just hook up the hose, turn it on and run the pump. It is like power washing the inside of the machine, which is very satisfying.

Here is a little before and after comparison of the closet!

Reflecting on this project, it is another example of the transformative power of a simple paint job. I am usually not much help in picking colors, but thankfully we have Rachel to fill that role around here, and she picked a good one. The deep blue tone is a perfect backdrop for our clothes.

We didn’t even upgrade our hangers and still have simple white plastic ones. So the lesson of this story might be just paint your closet navy blue and do nothing else and you might be really happy with it! I appreciate how good it looks when I choose my shirt each morning!