our front hallway used to be a four ft by four ft sqaure room acting as a foyer leading to seperate upstairs and downstairs apartments. in addition to the lovely tasha mccann in this pic you can see the wall that divided the two apartments, as well as the lovely laminate flooring. we knocked that wall down a long time ago, re-did the stairs (ahhh, our first project) and recently pulled up the flooring and refinished some hardwood as well as putting down slate tile. the tiling was really fun, but cleaning up the grout off slate was tough. poor ian wanted to stop hours before we finished but it just kept smudging. anytime you apply a damp cloth it smudges more and more. but here is is done, and i think it's looking pretty fine.