New Doors & Gallery Wall Reveal

This has been a 2 year project that has taken many, many hours more hours than we ever planned.  All we originally wanted to do was decorate the nursery when I found out I was pregnant and then it turned into an entire house makeover!

The original thought was just to update the 70s features of the house like the nasty, orange-y doors white 6-panel doors.

As usual, our plan quickly turned into a lot more work as we realized that we should probably put up new white trim too.  If we're going to replace doors, we should probably do all 26, plus some of them are custom sizes so they need to be ordered.  If we do 6-panel doors, we probably should get new closet doors too, right?  So that's 4 more closets to add to the list!

So if we're going to do all that work, we might as well just paint the main hallways upstairs to something pretty to make all those new white doors and trim stand out instead of that stark white that was there when we bought the house.

So because we do everything ourselves and never pay anyone to help, these projects take months...and months...and months!  Plus, we had a newborn...and then toddler to take care of at the same time.  We ended up chosing this pretty sage green for the hallway because we liked the way it made the white trim stand out, and it's wasn't too bold or boring.

My favorite part is at the end when I get to decorate!  Bare walls were just not cutting it and I looked for wall art that appealed to me for months.  So instead, I decided to do a family gallery wall with photos showing off my little guy.  He also LOVES to walk by and look at the photos, so it's a great way to help him learn to say the names of everyone in our family.

It took me a few months to gather enough frames from random thrift stores and clearance sections, and then I spraypainted and/or hand-painted them in several different colors.  (The whole color scheme took me way to long to decide on!)

The final result is so much brighter and more fun!

Instead of hanging the frames right on the wall, I chose to hang wall shelves so I could switch out the frames and move things around any time I wanted.

This is the 12 month baby collage form the photos I took every month of Connor's first year.  You can see more details here.

I'm still working on perfecting the area, but it's a great start compared to where we were a couple years ago!