Hallway of Heaven

For two long years we've been living in this house with an unfinished hallway!! Oh, the horror of it. Okay, I know that's a tad dramatic but it has been driving me batty having the hallway unfinished. Here is a peek at the horrific scene prior to the redoing:

Please pay extra close attention to the disgusting carpet, baseboard, and casing.

Trying to decide on a color. In the end we went with none of those :)

I had always envisioned frames of pictures. If you know me, you know I just don't appreciate art (although Ritchie broke me down and you will be seeing some art in the bedroom soon). Photography is art to me and especially photography of the people you love. So I wanted the hallway covered with pictures of our family. At first I struggled with having tons of pictures of just us there, but in the end I decided that I wanted it family centered and right now our family consists of us three and therefore that's who the photos will be of! Now, the best part of this project was how CHEAP it was! We already had some frames that just didn't work with our decor anymore and the rest I bought from Goodwill for $40. There are tons of them so that it a steal! This is just some of the loot:

Then we bought 4 cans of black spray paint at $4 each - so $16 more spent there.
I decided to spray the glass of these two lovelies with chalkboard paint to create chalkboards for family quotes in the hallway. I've been seeing this done all over the place and I just LOVED the idea! What I don't understand is who would GIVE these beauties to Goodwill. I mean, come on!
After much spraying and respraying we chose photos and determined the orientation and designs for the spaces. For the matting we purchased textured wallpaper and just cut it to fit the glass sizes. We then used spray adhesive to adhere the photos to the wallpaper and threw them in the frames! Voila! The wallpaper was $17 but we have well over half the role left for other projects and the spray adhesive was a whopping $10. But, again, we have another project in mind for that. So the total for our hallway was $83. Not bad when you consider how much frames and matting typically is. Here is the end result:

As you walk up the stairs:

A little further up...

Ta-da! In the hallway! There are still some empty

frames where we have to get pictures printed.

The chalkboards with quotes are my very favorite part of the hallway.

I wish I could have gotten rid of that glare! Can you see how lovely the photos are?

We still have one thing left to hang - Ritchie's marathon frame from last summer.

More photos!

We finally got that newborn canvas hung!

The best part of the hallway is the two cuties that

I found waiting at the top for me with smiles.

It just doesn't get any better than that!