Hallway Renovation

Seven steps up from the main level and you're in the hallway that connects to three upstairs bedrooms and a guest bathroom. All of which were completed before the hallway took shape. They had to be. The paint, the floors, the trim, the electric, the doors...it was all connected in one way or another.  There were efficiencies to be had by combining some of the jobs together and completing the hallway piecemeal.

Have you ever heard of a whole house fan. We had one. It didn't work. I'm not sure how it ever worked. Here's the gist. You open the main level windows and the fan pulls air from outside through the house and exhausts it into the attic where it presumably exits via the roof ridge vent. If you want a dusty house, this is how you get a dusty house. I took this monster out and loved every second of it.

There were three main goals for the hallway. Lighting, lighting, lighting. The original fixture housed a single bulb that was woefully inadequate for the space. Cable lights to the rescue. They fill the void with light without flooding it. They create all the right kinds of shadows that make the room feel bigger than it really is. That was a welcome and unintended consequence of the install.

I'm not entirely sure why I put chair rail in the hallway and did a two tone paint job but I did and we love it. Here's a top tip with molding of any kind. Buy all you need plus 10%. If you have to get more a month or even a couple weeks later, the profiles are often a hair off. The store probably received another shipment, and for some reason, the suppliers can change and there is no standard.  I was short about six inches after a miss-cut and had to scour the area for a section that would fit. That was not fun.

Most of the top level has crown molding but I had to think for a bit about how I was going to apply it to the hallway because of how the walls transition into the stairs. I think the above picture is a decent solution. This is a detail I hardly notice but appreciate it when I do.