One year update - Hallway, stairs, porch and landing

Here's the one year update on the porch, hallway and landing! Some of the progress is covered back in this post but there have been a few more updates since then so there are updated before and after photos :)

We are lucky here to have a really good size porch and entryway, but when we moved in it wasn't very usable. Firstly the front door didn't actually work, it was stuck locked and we didn't have keys for it, so we were going in and out the back or side doors all the time. It was also really cold as the door was quite draughty and there is no heating out there. 

We had the permanent ladder up to the open loft hatch on the landing too.

Which is finally gone!

I really like the window looking over the park, it lets in light to the stairs and landing.

The biggest change in the porch has been getting the door and window replaced and getting rid of the dark carpet. The door is a composite from HiTech Windows who also did the rest of our windows, we went with the dark blue as its a nice classic colour and fits in with the rest of the house and the street.

We had to get the stairs and landing re plastered as it was in pretty bad condition under the wallpaper, which did delay it being finished but it was worth doing as we covered up the second loft hatch while we were at it and it makes it nice and easy to paint!

On the stairs and landing went for a light grey carpet from The Carpet Hut as a pretty neutral tone in here, and it goes well with the lighter coloured laminate flooring from B&Q and the bedroom carpet and bathroom tiles upstairs. The laminate goes through into the living room and ties the rooms in together rather than the porch and hallway seeming like small boxed in rooms. The paint is "Ocean Ripple" in the Dulux "Light and Space" range which are colours designed for small or dark spaces, it reflects light and makes it seem brighter. I recently painted the porch in this colour too which ties it all in and makes the porch much brighter. This room is a bit hard to photograph as its quite small, but you can see the difference in how light it is even on this dark and windy day!
 

 

The light fixtures are new additions and Tom fitted both. They are from Argos (bought with the same voucher we got the bathroom light with), both LED and very bright! They have the same speckled glass finish so tie in together even though we couldn't have the drop one downstairs due to the door. 

The big difference in here recently is that we finally got rid of the permanent opening and massive ladder to the loft, we got a loft hatch and fold up ladder fitted in November and oh my gosh it has made such a difference! Its so much warmer upstairs without losing all the heat into the loft, it opened up the entrance to the spare room and just looks so much better. Its also lots easier to get things in and out of the loft as the ladder is fixed and much easier to use and they made the hole slightly larger so its a standard size now. The difference is really good visually too without having to look at that ladder all the time, and opens it up ready for us to start on the spare room one day.

So that's where we are now, its getting here in these rooms but still a bit left to do. The to do list in here is;

Skirting boards, other trim and interior doors,

Replace the light fixture in the porch,

Get some coat hooks and shelves etc up in the porch,

Get a bench and shoe storage in the porch,
The porch is also still quite cold (although better with the new door) as there is no heating out there and seems prone to a bit of condensation damp so we will look at getting that sorted out. In the long run we will probably add heating to a few rooms that don't have it when we replace the boiler. 

Put a banister on,

Box in the pipes to the radiator in the hallway,

Put up the smoke detector,

Put a door on the spare room (probably once the spare room is done and when we do all the other doors in the house),

Put a metal threshold on between the hall and bathroom,

Put up photos and artwork.