Updated Hallway

One of the projects that we did "finish" during our little blog hiatus was our hallway. This one only took us like 6 months!! I know...you probably have whiplash from the speed at which we complete our home projects. We had already added the board and batten back in February but took a couple of weeks to put on the final touches. Then we finally ventured out and bought a TV stand from IKEA that serves as our hallway storage unit. I ended up having a good amount of leftover fabric from when I tried my hand at making window valances a while ago so I handed that over to my mom who whipped up a seat cushion for our bench! I tossed in a couple of pillows that I already had (need to change those out still) and we added some pictures to the walls and voila! Hallway is done!

And by "done" I mean there is still a bunch of other stuff I would still like to do, such as repaint, add crown molding, find different prints, bring in some more color and maybe change out the cushion cover based on the season.

I know...the suspense is just killing you! Without further delay, here's the big reveal!

Wait, just kidding...let's take one last look at what we started with...



And here is our hallway now!

Haha. I totally just realized that Shamie is in the first picture, not the second one, but then back in the third picture laying exactly like in the first one. Ha! He loves his front door spot!

Another "before" view, looking down the hall into the kitchen....

And the after....

Here is a little more of a closeup of the hooks that we added and cushion. I need to replace those pillows and normally during the week, the hooks are covered with little baby jackets and hats.

We went back and forth on this bench because it takes up some decent space in the hallway but I can't tell you how glad I am that we got it. Its the perfect fit. It's just low enough that the kids can sit on it when we are putting shoes and socks on. Every morning, we line up the kids clothes for school and my work bag here so everything is in one spot ready to go. We keep Emma's shoes in the first drawer, and Jack's shoes in the second drawer along with hats (which is coming in even more handy as the weather cools down). The third drawer has some catch all stuff that we will probably use as the new hat/glove drawer as it gets colder. Its been so nice though to have little things like sunscreen right where you need it. The kids love to run over and pick out their own shoes too! With two toddlers, easy storage of the everyday stuff close by is key to not going insane.

I haven't quite figured out what to do with the little shelves above the drawers yet. We started to keep some small toys there but that seemed to be too tempting for the monsters babies, so they ended up spread out throughout the hallway.

Here is a quick shot the valence that I made a while ago with the same fabric that my mom used for the cushion. She did a fabulous job on the cushion cover!!

So there you have it! Little by little we are working on the house making some progress! Although every time we fix something, I add three more things to the list!