Our front hallway has been driving me a bit crazy since we moved in. For whatever reason, the previous owners of this house painted the tiny entrance way a deep coal-blue which just made it look impossibly small. On top of that, we never adequately dealt with our need for proper storage space when we moved in last year, and just threw down some hooks and shoe shelves without thinking too much about it. The combined result is in the Before picture below.

Before: Paint too dark for the small space, no proper storage or shelving.

Messy, yes? And so dark and jumbled that even in the daytime it was hard to find your stuff among the hooks and piles of shoes. It needed to be brighter, I thought – and *way* more organized. Not to mention that B. has a habit of dropping keys, change, bits of paper, on the living room table when he comes home and I wanted to make a place just for his bits and pieces.

The result of all this thinking (and Brian’s willingness to paint) is below! A yellow paint to match the yellow in a Mexican tin mirror of Brian’s, three wall-to-wall shelves, a coat hanger, a mailbox for Brian’s things and all fixtures spray-painted the same red to contrast against the walls.There is still one more piece to come which is a curtain that will hang in front of the shelves and can be closed when we need to hide any mess. I haven’t got the fabric yet, but will post my final “after” picture here when I do.

We are amazed at the transformation!

After: Brighter, with shelving and fixtures painted red in keeping with the Mexican tin mirror.