Howdy folks! This fine Decor Monday, I'm bringing you a weekend project that transformed our middle hallway. Our middle hall isn't one I've shown photos of before, I don't think, because here's what was going on:

That's right: Nothing. Like many hallways, this one was pretty overlooked. The floors, which I'm sure were once beautiful, are pretty beat up, and the walls are painted a crappy generic cream color. They're crappily painted, too. Still, it just being a hallway, I'm not sure it would have made the priority list for a while, except that I am finally, finally making serious progress in our office, and there was a heckuva stack of photos and artwork that was seriously killing my buzz in there.

Some of this stuff is projects on deck, and a lot of it is art and photographs we haven't gotten around to hanging yet. Of that stuff, a bunch of it was serious stuff - photos, paintings and art done by our friends and family, even our wedding certificate, which was signed, Quaker style, by all of our wedding guests. That stuff wasn't going to Goodwill, and I didn't particularly want it in a closet, but there wasn't necessarily a good place for all of it in our living spaces. Growing up, my grandmother always had those collage-style picture frames hanging in rows down her hallways, so I found myself naturally headed in that direction for my own photos. Then I thought showcasing the art that's important to us in the same place would be really nice; it would sort of imbue the whole hall with meaning.

But I didn't want to just hang a bunch of mismatched frames on the blank, crappily-painted cream colored wall. That seemed boring and like not enough work. Instead, I wanted something to ground everything - the way a chair rail, picture rail, credenza or mantle often do for gallery-style photo displays.

I was uninterested in installing any of that, but while pondering it, I dreamed up the idea of a thick, chunky stripe down the entirety of the hallway. Black was the natural choice: I had black paint leftover from the chalkboard wall, I tend to really like how art and photos pop against a dark wall, and I am obsessed with black and white right now. In case anyone reading this blog has managed to miss that memo.

I taped off a two-foot-thick stripe down the entire hall on both sides. Then I gave it two quick coats of my leftover chalkboard paint, mixing together leftover Rustoleum and Ben Moore. Rustoleum is more satisfyingly inky wet, but they both dried to a nice dark hue. You're supposed to wait something like 4 hours between coats of chalkboard paint, but since I didn't plan to write on this stuff, I went ahead and recoated when it was dry to the touch, in about 30 minutes. Then, before that second coat was dry (so the paint doesn't dry to the tape and get pulled off when you remove it), I pulled back my tape.

Whoops. Especially with this high of contrast between my paint colors, there was no room for error with my tape line, and I must not have been careful enough. Want to know what I did about it?

Nothing.

I figured by the time I hung the art up, which I intended to sort of stagger along the line, as opposed to squarely fitting everything within the stripe, you wouldn't notice the bleed-through. Though I'm looking for it and can see it in a spot in the pic below, as I'm sure can you, overall I really think was right. 

I painted the wall Saturday. Including taping, which is always a time-consuming pain, it took a few hours. Saturday night, I went through everything I wanted to hang and printed out and framed photos where necessary. Sunday, I propped everything against the wall, distributing things more or less equally between the two sides of the hall. Then, I started hanging. I chose one large piece to be my centerpiece for each wall, and then hung things outward from there, going exclusively on my gut. Nary a ruler or level in sight. I didn't want this to be perfect - that's not really our vibe, and I just want something flexible and fun for this area. I'm assuming photos will get switched out and things will evolve over time, and I want a sense of fluidity about it. I guess I'm trying to capture the sense that this isn't just about the past, but a nice place to catalog the here and now of our family, too. Here're some shots from various angles on the finished project.

You can see that I didn't bother to unify the frames, because I like that they're not a perfect matching set. We've got Bret's baby pictures that his mom gave us, still in those classic, collage-style frames, paintings my grandfather did of the California landscape and framed in those cheap black metal numbers, and frames we received for our wedding that I printed out new photos for. Plus unframed canvases, in the form of a collage and painting done by friends of ours. I like the chaos.

But I like order, too, so I did go for symmetry, in a rough sense, and I am very happy that the black stripe did what I was hoping it would - ground the different pieces, so it doesn't look like they're all just floating around aimlessly. I hate aimlessness. The whole effect is really quite dramatic, and our hall is barely recognizable. Though I'm happy with how it turned out, it's actually more...formal?...looking than I was originally envisioning, and I'm still adjusting to the black, to be honest. I wonder if maybe a lower contrast colored stripe would provide the same grounding effect, but not be so dramatic. We'll see if I get used to it and love it, or if I paint over it in a lighter color in a month. Feel free to take bets! And tell us, how do you display the meaningful stuff in your life?

If you're inspired by what you see here, please take a moment to Pin (Pin button in top left corner of each picture if you scroll your mouse over), like or share on Facebook, or spread the word through any medium or network you love. I appreciate it and I'll see you tomorrow!