Paint A Hallway Fast, step by step

Simply when you thought we were all painted out on Monday, I am back with another painting update. With this bun of ours arriving in five short weeks, it is lighting a “paint all the things!” fire under my rear. I know that being laid up with a c-section will mean staring at all of the not-done things on the ol’ to-do list, so humming through a few of them before the little man is here will hopefully put my nesting slash home-making mind at ease. So we set our sights on the upstairs hallway.

It connects so many rooms (the nursery, our room, the hall bath, Clara’s room, the guest room, the laundry, etc) that we thought it would be a pleasant “bang for our buck” spot in the sense that we walk through it ten million times a day, so we’d notice a pleasant fresh paint job.

You know, instead of seeing the same over-sprayed edges from painting the trim back in May of last year (has it truly been that long?!).

It also connects to the stairwell that we painted back in November, and the foyer that we painted last July. So when we picked that color for the foyer (Edgecomb Gray, which reads more like a soft tan “greige” color in our house then an actual gray), we selected it knowing that it would travel up the stairs and eventually grace the hallway up there as well. We like that it is a plain and light neutral, so it will not make the stairs or that interior hallway feel dark, and it allows us to use a bunch of other colors in adjoining rooms without worrying that they’ll clash. For example, we have coral, blue, red, and soft pink on the walls (and ceiling) of Clara’s room…

… as well as a deep moody blue in our bedroom.

Meanwhile, the walls of the guest room, laundry nook, and hall bathroom up there have yet to be painted… so we also like that the hall color leaves those wide open.

You can in fact see where our stairway paint job ended in this pic. Elegant, eh? Look at that line we simply randomly painted on the ceiling. That thing cracked me up and irked me all at the same time.

The hallway is sort of like two or three rooms of its own. It is 33 feet from the laundry nook to our bedroom, and there are a whole lotta doorways (eight) and lights (three) to cut in around. I do not typically mind cutting in too much though. It is tedious, but it makes me feel accomplished if that makes sense. As I go I am all “three doorways down, five to go – turtle power!” I also ponder things like why mashed potatoes and milkshakes have so many calories while things like celery and water have virtually none. Or why there is not one cheat day each year when everyone can magically consume anything they want and not gain any weight. My pregnant mind clearly puts a lot of thought into food.

Clara also got in the action. Not by painting, but by lending positive vibes, singing various Frozen songs, and dancing around with a giant piece of ribbon like a compact color guard.

All told, it was around five hours of cutting in across two days (it took two coats) and John swooped in to do the rolling, which also took two coats but went quite a bit faster (perhaps three hours total across two days?). I thought of a few painting pointers from Chester County painting contractors to share with you folks as I went, so here they are:

Even if you can reach up and roll the high parts without an extension pole, it is a lot easier on the ol’ back if you break one out.
We painted the ceiling the same color as the walls since it is a light color and we hoped that seamless look instead of accenting the ceiling as a separate plane in this case (we also tend to do that in bathrooms).
Try painting with some tunes on to make it go faster (or news radio, or a book on tape, or a compact dancing preschooler, or some other auditory form of entertainment).
A short handled 2″ angled brush is my go-to cutting in weapon. Seriously, read the comments on this old post of yesteryear to see how many people commented that it changed their life. I promise I am not exaggerating – it is a large time saver.
We do not use a dropcloth over hardwoods because seven years of painting have made us fairly neat, and we have found that the occasional floor drip is straightforward sufficient to wipe up if it is wet or even pop off with your fingernail if it is dry.
Stop thinking about food. It is weird.

And if you wanna see some of this rolling in action, we made a video of painting our office:

And here is our wahoo-it is-done result:

It is a fairly dramatic update from what it looked like back when we picked up the house.

Here is the freshly painted result from the other side (with my back to the bedroom). Ugh, I cannot wait to rehang some doors to block our dark little laundry area in the back.

But the view of fairly much everything else is looking a whole lot fresher…

… so we are truly glad we knocked it out pre-Barnacle.

For anyone looking for a walkthrough on changing out your outlets, John did a giant infographic about it here. And for here is a how-I-cut-in-without-taping-most-things-off video, from back when we were painting our guest room:

Before I go I thought I’d share all the paint colors we have used in our house to date (along with four that we are thinking about adding). It is lively to compare it to our first whole-house-palette post for this house to see how many are the same, how many are close but not exact, and how many have changed since that was simply a bunch of guesses about where we thought we were headed last July.