Let's kick off the renovation with the entry. The entry, like most spaces in our home, is a multi-stage project, meaning this is very much an in-progress situation. It's fun to see all the small changes that moves this space closer to our welcoming/bright/storage goals.
The entry is small-ish with low ceilings, one window, and had a sliding door closet, which was great for storage. However, the sliding door meant that when one door is open, the other side of the closet is blocked, and made for some very frustrating mornings when only half of the closet was accessible and everyone is trying to get out the door at the same time. The one window faces north, so this space felt closed off from the rest of the house and pretty dark.
Here's the listing photo:
We moved our junk in and after a few weeks of wrestling the sliding doors just enough for people to get what they needed without blocking the other side (or losing a limb from someone shoving the door while you were reaching in), we removed the doors for easier access to the whole closet. But then everyone who comes in the front door sees all the ugly all the time. That was life for a long time, folks.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Phase 1 was obvious: remove the wallpaper.
Phase 2: Add some detail and light. There wasn't anything going on in this space and it needed some jazz hands to make this dark, low ceiling-ed entry feel special. I did some homework and found this inspo image:
Yes, yes and yes. Fresh paint on the trim was obvious, but adding some wall detail and opening up the wall into the dining room was high priority to connect the entry to the other spaces in the house. Because I'm such a visual person (#indecision), I had to use blue painters tape to create the wall detail a million ways and heights before I could commit to an idea. We went with something very simple on the main wall.
After the wall detail was up, I painted the trim with 2 coats of primer and 2-3 coats of quality paint because Laura don't mess around when it comes to trim.
Next, we tackled the door opening. The girls were the fist ones to put a hole in the wall!
Now all the light from the giant window in the living room can come into the entry and it doesn't feel so dark or cramped. We felt happy about these small changes and left it this way for--I don't even remember--a pretty long time but we were happy with the improvements. We knew the rest would be addressed once we did the main floor renovation.
Here's the view from the newly opened doorway into the dining/family room.
And here was the new view from the dining to the entry:
Here's a little before and after peek of the stairs.
I painted the door, all the trim, and the walls--eventually.
The next steps happened when our renovation began. We wanted all flooring on the first floor to be the same, so we used red oak throughout since it already existed in the kitchen, dining, and family room. We hired this job out and it really turned out beautifully, which I'll show in a later post. Greg and his dad removed the carpet runner on the stairs and there were about 2 million staples holding the carpet in. It was no joke to get all those staples out. Here's some progress shots.
We also decided to completely remove the closet and header, which set us up for a better system down the road, but it also meant that we were committing to full display of our family's mess to everyone who dares step inside. I added another row of hooks just to try to hold back the tide of things that land on the floor.
The extra hooks were added in vain (aka the kids throw their stuff on the floor anyway), in case you were wondering, but it was a noble effort.
This door goes out to the garage.
And then we just lived very glamorously for a while.
(That was sarcasm. We did not live glamorously.)
That was a lot of photos! Some of those felt a little painful to revisit, to be honest.
My takeaway is that fresh paint and creating a doorway in this entry really made the biggest impact. Paint really does save the day. Also, I wonder if I should dye my hair red again: that color was kinda amazing.
Thanks for walking through the renovation journey with me.
