Well… we did it!!! We made it to the finish line in time for the One Room Challenge reveal week. A huge thank you to Linda at Calling it Home for hosting the ORC and motivating hundreds of us to improve spaces in our homes. If you have been following along from the beginning, you may remember that I set out to complete our upstairs hallway and the main staircase. This space isn’t exactly a room, but it needed a major makeover as I hadn’t touched it in the 5 years we’ve lived here. I’ll show you one little teaser of the hallway, then I want to revisit the original plan and the scary before. Then I’ll show you how it looks today! These ORC makeovers are much more dramatic if we refresh on the before. 🙂
The original space boasted lovely wood flooring, but also wood trim, wood railings, and wood like hollow core doors. 1979 called, and they don’t even want those doors back. Ever. As you can see below, wood trim up the staircase, wood spindles, and wooden railing that was falling out of the wall.
And in the hallway upstairs, wood trim, and hollow doors featuring duck and star stickers. We were keeping it classy.
My plan was to update this space with gallons and gallons of primer and paint, new doors and door knobs, a DIY rope railing, a black accent wall, and updated special art. You can see the plan below.
Rope Rail / Rope Hardware / Lighting (actual light I used)/ Frames / Focus on the Good / Be Silly / Doors / Knobs / Paint / Black Tassels / Stairway Inspiration
Shall we check it out now? I’d love to show you! Come on into my hallway… unfortunately I did select the most dimly lit space in our house, so bear with me!
I painted the back wall that faces you as you come up the stairs with Sherwin Williams Tricorn Black, which is a fabulous perfect black. On that wall, I added new photos I shot of my kids and had printed at Costco. I also printed two DIY pieces of quote art I created with lyrics from a special song. For all 4 luster finish 16×20 prints, the cost was under $30. This part of the whole project is my favorite as it’s the most special to me.
Our hallway is narrow so there’s no room for any pieces of furniture. The art is where we can reflect our personalities and tell our story.
At the other end of the hallway, I also added some gold foil state art from Minted. I selected states that have significance to our family.
I love how this black, white, and gold theme continues into the adjacent room as well.
All of the other walls in this space, including the incredibly high stairwell wall, were painted with Sherwin Williams paint color matched to Benjamin Moore’s Cloud Clover, which is a warm white I love to use. It’s in the downstairs hallway, kitchen, dining room, and that black and white bedroom off of this hallway.
It may not sound like such a large task until you take a look at the stairwell, and what I had to paint. It was necessary as these walls all started out as a terrible shade of almond. If you’re curious on how to reach these edges and heights without using a ladder, click here.
Before I talk about the staircase you see, I want to show you the incredible new doors from Metrie. Remember those awful hollow core doors? How could you forget? They’re ugliness is burned into your brain! Well, replace that image with this…
We used the pre-existing hinges which is why the placement is a little weird… not sure who put this house together originally, but they did some interesting things! These doors are absolutely incredible and make all the difference.
You may recall last week that when it came to the doors, we ran into some trouble… limited time, and with never having hung a door, we lacked the know-how and the confidence to learn a new skill quickly. I called in the professionals and hired someone to hang the doors for me. However, before he came over Friday night, in our attempts at trying, we went ahead and trimmed the doors. Rookie mistake! We should have called a pro from the beginning because we trimmed a couple too short, so there’s a bigger gap on two of them than I’d like. However, the doors themselves are classic and really take our hallway up a notch or seven.
These doors come pre-primed, and you may recall that my plan had been to paint them black. However, once I saw them hung in their white pre-primed stage, I loved the airiness. I decided to use the Benjamin Moore Simply White paint from the trim, stair trim, and railing spindles to give them a fresh white and bright look. All they are missing is a duck sticker, am I right? 😉 
I wanted to keep the knobs simple, and let the doors really stand out on their own. I selected Schlage Orbit knobs in antique brass for their simple round shape.
The doors look great in the hallway, but also awesome in the bedrooms they open into.
I would show you how great they look paired with Sawyer’s navy blue walls, but his room is not exactly photo-ready at this moment in time… so here’s another shot of my master bedroom for you.
One more change upstairs in the hallway is the light fixture. I purchased this light from Home Depot, but can’t seem to locate it on their website. Amazon has the exact same one here. The track style is great for a dim hallway that needs every corner lit at night.
I selected the ORB finish to be cohesive with our downstairs hallway lights, as well as the ceiling fan and curtain hardware in our master.
Moving down the staircase, I sanded, primed, and painted the trim as well as the wooden spindles. That was a big undertaking, but so worth the effort.
My original plan had been to paint the risers as well, but I didn’t want it to be broken up and decided I liked the look of wood risers. I also love the wood trim on the sides in contrast to the white paint, so that played into my decision as well
And now let’s talk about the elephant in the room, the DIY black rope railing. I shared my full tutorial on that earlier this week and you can find it here.
This railing is certainly the most unique element in this space, and I couldn’t love it more! The huge tassel ends are so fun- just be cautious of puppies. 😉
On the other side of the railing downstairs, I balanced it with tassels I purchased from Amazon.
I am thrilled with how everything came together, even if it’s a little imperfectly done in some places. Everything flows so much more now, and the black wall at the top of the stairs is balanced with our black chalkboard wall at the bottom of the stairs.
From the dining room, you can see how everything now flows room to room.
similar mirror / similar bar cart / similar green goblets /hall light / rope / tassels / blue glass glove mold / white glove mold / horse art / mudcloth / black panton chair / letterboard / similar paint by number / aqua glasses
Admittedly during the last 6 weeks, there were moments I struggled. There were weekends I traveled and panicked about losing time. There were stressful times when I had to call the pros. However, in the end, we pulled through and I’m so happy we didn’t give up. For now, I am saying, “Peace out, ORC! See you in the fall!”
You can check out all of the designer spaces here, and find the rest of the guest participants at Calling it Home!
A huge thank you to Metrie for providing me with doors for this project. All other items were purchased by me, and I’ve used affiliate links where applicable.
