This “Bare” Hallway Went from Forgettable to Full of Charm
Oftentimes, home projects are done to make rooms (and their fixtures and appliances) more modern. However, sometimes DIY projects can make a room look like it stepped back in time — in a good way. Take, for instance, this project that turned a basic hallway into an “English Dollhouse,” or this bedroom makeover that adds cozy cottage vibes.
Renter Sydney Moss (@sydneymossdesigns) has done a couple of projects in her apartment to give it an almost-Victorian look. Her living room has painted murals on every wall, and she continued to paint murals in her hallway.
When she and her fiancé, Joe, moved in, the hallway was “bare, and the doors and trim had been given the landlord special in an unflattering brown — probably to make it seem like wood,” Sydney explains. “I wanted it to be welcoming, eye-catching, and immediately let a guest know the kind of home they’re walking into.” (Read: A colorful, vintage home.) She started with paint.
A blue and yellow base kicked off the project.
I didn’t have the wherewithal to strip the paint (but maybe will one day), so I painted the trim and doorframes yellow and the ceiling blue to start,” Sydney says. She chose Benjamin Moore’s Vast Sky for the blue and Sherwin-Williams’ Olden Amber for the yellow.
Sydney says in hindsight, she wishes she would have primed the walls before painting. “I’d also sand the trim before painting, as the previous brown was clumpy, so I added a little to the landlord special there, but as a renter, it’s sort of not my job to increase the value of the apartment, so it works for us.”
The flowers came later.
About two years after the ceiling and trim project, Sydney decided to give the walls a wainscoting-like paint job with flowers on top. “I taped off the walls at 3 feet up, as I knew I wanted something that resembled wainscoting,” she says. “It remained there for almost three months before I came up with the floral design based on a friend’s mother’s coffee table that had painted lemons in the center.”
Then, Sydney sketched the design in pencil (which she later removed with a Magic Eraser) and hand-painted a few flowers every weekend so it wasn’t rushed. “I love that each flower is unique in its own way,” she says. “I became very good at holding my hand steady while painting a straight line.”
She used leftover paint for the flowers, and she says one of the main DIY lessons she learned was to take good care of her paintbrushes. “Wash them thoroughly after each use and dry them so they last longer,” she says — it’ll save you money on supplies in the end.
Two more eyesores in the hallway got DIY makeovers.
Sydney also covered the old flush-mount light in her hallway with an IKEA REGNSKUR ceiling lamp, and she gave the slatted closet doors a makeover.
She removed the upper slats in the closet door and replaced the opening with a striped fabric, which she added with rod pockets on wooden dowels (sewn extra-wide to create ruffles). “I think it was only the second time I had used my jigsaw to remove the slats and have no idea if I did that part right, but it turned out OK,” she says. “I used wood filler to fill in the gaps and sanded it down to make it smooth.” Her next project? Adding a colorful trim around the border of the fabric.
“We have to walk through [the hallway] every day, so might as well make it nice,” Sydney says. She says the transformation so far “completely brightens up the room with something whimsical, and is reminiscent of the actual picture-frame molding in other parts of the apartment.”
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