Why Keeping a Beam Made Me Paint My Hallway White

There is a funny story (mostly debunked) that you can follow the march of technology all the way from the size of two horses butts as they pulled a roman war chariot, to the size of passenger carriages, to the width of railroad tracks, to the size of the solid rocket boosters on the space shuttles that they transported by train.  It is funny because even if it isn’t literally true, it is mostly true – small details and decisions lead to another and sooner or later you have no choice but to paint your hallway white.

But let me back up.

With Sage hard at work on her kitchen makeover, and contemplating some high-stakes beam questions, I thought it would be a good time to talk about a similar decision made back during my renovation: keeping a beam and wall segment between my living room and dining room.

I did a post on the renovation a long while back, but because I did it all before we started the blog, I just gave an overview rather than sharing all the details.  Essentially, the biggest change we made to the house was taking out some walls between the kitchen, dining room and living room (marked red in the below).

It was a clear call.   The dining room was cramped and it made the kitchen very dark.  The pattern on the built-ins was pretty overwhelming and definitely dated.

I’m all for built-in shelving, but it was excessive.  I can only imagine how cluttered and oppressive that little room would feel if those shelves were filled with stuff.

But while deciding to take down the walls was easy, we had a lot of details to figure out.  (Seriously, when I bought a fixer-upper, I had no idea how many decisions I was about to make.)

One issue was that the wall between the dining and living room was load bearing, so to remove it entirely would have required adding a lot of structural support, which was an expense we weren’t prepared to take on.  Instead, we left a small wall segment (in blue in the above floor plan) and the built in that is in the right in the above photo (and in yellow in the floor plan).  We also kept the beam that ran along the ceiling.  Keeping the built-in but removing the beam would have been difficult.

This was a great plan.  We still gained a lot of light and openness, but saved money and kept some separation between the kitchen and living room (which we like).  However, it was also a little awkward.

The wall segment was strangely in between a large area that we wanted to have feel like one room.  Painting it blue (to match the wall color in the front) would just chop up the space, and a strip of blue along the ceiling would look pretty weird.  Painting it white to match our ceiling and trim was the only solution.  That way, it would blend into the ceiling and, being light, would hopefully help keep the room feeling bright and open.

However, the beam and wall segment also connected directly to the wall in the hallway.

This was a bummer, because I had big dreams of an intensely colored hallway (red? magenta? navy?) filled with art.  Hallways are not quite living spaces, so I thought it would be the perfect place to go a little crazy.  Dreams dashed.  With no natural stopping point, I had no choice but to paint the hallway white, as well.

(Yes, I DO still need to properly decorate it.)

To follow the chain a little farther, this is actually why I painted all my doors bright yellow.  With so many doors in this long hallway, I thought this was the perfect trick to get the vibrant look I was going for.

The beam also connects directly to the built-in in the dining room.  It was an obvious choice to paint that white, as well.  However, less obvious was the finish.  Usually I would go with satin or semi-gloss for a built-in piece which looks more like trim and functions more like furniture.  However, there was no natural stopping point for the paint finish all the way from the hallway, and the hallway walls were in no shape to be semi-gloss, so I painted it eggshell like everything else (and the interior yellow to match the doors).

I love the way it looks in white – and I am crazy about the pattern now that it isn’t symmetrical with its partner – but I do think it would have a bit more presence if it were in the right finish.

And, to tie it all together, when I made over a wall cabinet to be a sideboard in the dining room, I painted it the same color as my doors to bring some of the yellow into this front space.

So, because we were too cheap to remove a ceiling beam, one thing led to another and we have a white hallway, an eggshell built-in, bright yellow doors, and a matching yellow sideboard.  This is the view that sets the tone for the house the moment you walk through the door.  I love it, but it’s funny how it all came about.

High stakes decision making for sure!  Hopefully Sage is thinking farther ahead with her renovation than I was…