Those endless hallways in NYC pre-war buildings

I spend about 90% of my day in this hallway. All the rooms connect from it on the right. I'm sure there is an official name for this horrible floor layout, but I like to call it the Let's Make a Deal floor plan. When people come over and ask where the bathroom is, I tell them, "Pick a door!" If I painted numbers on all the doors, my bathroom would be door number 2. Don't pick door number 3.  It usually has three goats inside.

When we first moved in, the hallway was my least favorite thing about the apartment. It was endless, boring, and dark. So we made it a mission to decorate it like any other room in the house.

Here's the five things we did to make the hallway tolerable: 
1. A carpet runner. We got ours from Flor. I liked that we could customize the length and reshape the carpet tiles the next time we move.
2. Lighting. When we moved in, there was a single ugly light fixture in the middle of the hallway. We replaced it with three of these from CB2 and had the landlord hardwired them. So much brighter!
2. A place to dump my keys and mail. Rob found a small bookshelf off craigslist. It's perfect. See here and scroll down for a pic.
3. Art. Check out this post for more details on how I blew up the pictures.
5. Color. Rob painted the door blue yesterday. I threw out the exact paint color. Sorry. I'll look for it the next time I go to the hardware store.

It took nine months, but I think I'm finally happy with the hallway. Pictured above is Ella crying about Oscar spilling glue all over her artwork. And the other picture is of Owen sneaking into the kitchen for ice cream late at night. Had these events happened in front of the boring white door, the kids would have gotten yelled at for sure. But the new blue door? I'm suddenly the most understanding perfect mom.  It's been so life changing, I'm planning on painting everything in my life bright blue. Starting with Owen.