A hallway is just a transition space to get from one place to another, right?  Well this hallway serves as the entrance point to our home for family and close friends.  A space I walk thru at least 10 times a day.  There were a lot of reasons we never did anything with this space.  It was just waiting.  Waiting for funding, waiting for inspiration.  Most importantly it was waiting for solutions.

One day while dreaming out on the deck last summer a solution finally came to me!  It was a crazy idea and it definitely got an eye roll from the husband.  But, I thought this could work.

The problem wasn’t the pocket door or privacy for the powder room.  Well that was a big problem, but I knew the solution for that.  The problem was the laundry room.  How do we close it off with the furnace less then a foot from the door to the garage.  Furnaces have to breathe!  I’ve been hearing this forever.  Well, we could do this. No, furnaces have to breathe.  You get the idea.

Yuck what a mess!!!

There are switches on the side of the furnace that the furnace people need to get too for maintenance.  There was no way to accommodate those switches and put up a wall.  Any solution had to not only include camoflaging the furnace but also had to be easily removable, in the event the nice furnace man needed to get into that side.  My crazy idea that warranted the eye roll, was a removable wall or panel.  Something that could be suspended from the I beam and lifted off.  Told yeah it was crazy!

After the pocket door wall…

After the cabinet build and trimming everything out…

After all of that it was time to address the elephant in the room…  

The husband came up with the final solution.  Ooh that sounds icky!  Make a panel that looks like the antique screen.  This panel needed to be thin because we only had 1″ of space to bypass the sliding door over the panel.  Home Depot bound we head out to p/u a 1/4″ sheet of plywood.  Keeping with the cleaning out the garage idea we utilized some very thin trim boards we had left over from the pocket door to frame it out and in short order we had a panel.

This is after one coat of Wise Owl Chalk Enamel.  I promise it looks much better now!

To keep it the same as the screen door I painted it black first and then blue.  The screen was originally black and I over painted it with my Farrow and Ball custom paint mix.  Like always I sanded it thru so some of the black was exposed.  The panel is actually just propped up against the furnace because there is no room to hang it but it’s staying in place and is working.

Panel Built it was time for the screen door.  How to camouflage the screen so you can’t see into the laundry room.  The two favorite things about this door was the copper screen and what I first thought was a doggy door but realized it was a mail slot!  I didn’t want to take out the screen or cover it up.  Working from my stash I grabbed this fabric.

Stapling the fabric to the back of the door was simple and took only a few minutes.  

That really opens up the space plus it gives you that last check as your going out the door. To keep it from wobbling I added some velcro to the bottom of the mirror.  That helped but still didn’t completely solve the problem so I had a styrofoam packing square that was just the right depth. Cutting off a couple of lengths and sliding them right up behind the mirror  worked perfectly.  No more wobble.  

You can see the undermount barn door mechanism here and it works smooth as can be.  Though I wish it were iron I’ve excepted it.  I just ignore the fact that’s it’s not!!!  If you want to read about the necessity for the undermount go to Two Steps Forward and One Step Backwards

So let’s take a tour of 18 s/f.

I am so excited to have these 2 spaces done.  Did it end up like I imagined?  No, not exactly.  It is full of oddments and things that make you say, “Hmm?”  A fish gaffer hanging above the barn door, 

An antique slate with my moms hand writing and a saying she firmly believed in,

“Just the right amount of too much!”  

An old 18th Century Betty Lamp I picked up in Kansas City many years ago has finally found the right space to show off it’s lovely hand forged goodness.  Yeah I’ve got to patch that hole!

 A set of skeleton keys hanging from a meat hook!  

And last but not least an old grain sifter.  This is still a work in progress.   

I like the fact that as you’re sitting in the family room you think to yourself what’s this?  Where does that go.  

So everyone just because it’s a hallway doesn’t mean it has to be void of personality.  Let me know what you think.

Thanks for stopping

Shelley