{renovate} hallway reveal

Last week I revealed the new paint and new floors in the back bedroom. This week, we're ready to show off our newly refinished hallway!

Here was the hallway, in February. Note: I completely photoshopped the carpet into this picture. Don't worry, I will never photoshop a photo and not let you all know. We were just so excited to rip up the ugly carpet that I forgot to take a true before. The accuracy of this photo, though, is amazing. I heart photoshop. 

After we ripped up the carpet, and the linoleum, we were left with ....

... hardwoods! Shiny refurbished hardwoods!

What was once this ....

Is now this. This is the view from the kitchen looking towards the bedrooms/bathroom. If you look closely, you can see the lines from the moon/sun linoleum. Let's just say you don't have to look closely in person to see them. Boo. We'll be pulling up those boards and replacing them with salvaged hardwoods.

Which is what we did in this little area. The huge black area in the center of the photo is actually plywood. Not hardwoods. One day last year Chris was driving through our neighborhood and found the original hardwoods from a house that was being remodeled laying near a dumpster. Being the resourceful smarty that he is, he grabbed a bunch (after asking the owners, of course) just in case we ever needed it.

That same area now looks like this! YAH!

What I like best is the cohesiveness of having the same flooring throughout the majority of the upstairs now. The kitchen is still linoleum, but at some point I would like to refinish those hardwoods as well. In a floor plan that's as small as ours, having the same floors really opens up the house, and dare I say, even makes it feel a little bigger. Above is the hallway into the newly refinished back bedroom.

This is a view from our bedroom through the hallway to the other bedroom.

And this angle is the living room looking through the hallway. I love that all you see are hardwoods!

We painted the hallway when we painted the living room two years ago. So pulling up the carpet left an unsightly line along the baseboards. Luckily, it was nothing a little touch up paint couldn't handle.

A half hour later and all the baseboards were looking clean and crisp again. Lastly, we painted the vent that is in the bottom right of this picture. If you noticed in the above photos, it's blue. To match the carpet, obviously. So we spray painted it black to match the other vents in the house.

It feels so good to have this project wrapped up! Wednesday I'll be posting a tutorial for refinishing your hardwoods. While time consuming, it's actually pretty easy and saved us a lot of money.

So tell me, what did you all do this weekend? Anyone, besides me, glued to the TV watching March Madness?! :)

Edited: I'm adding this project to the Nester's Take a Risk Day link party! Because pulling up your carpet with a $0 budget was a huge risk for us :).