Entryway Overhaul

ENTRY WAY OVERHAUL! 

I've been dying to do a post about my entryway for a while. It's probably the room with the most change in our house. We started with a very small dark room with nothing but a coat closet. I imagine it's probably like every entryway in a house from the early 2000's.. Just kinda.. Blah. 

Well that's not my style! I wanted my entry to make a statement! So I told Jordan that I thought maybe we should just rip out the closet.. He laughed it off like "Oh, honey you're just so funny". Yep. Not joking people. I was on a mission ;). So after much begging and eventually pleading my case in front of the jury (Jordan) and killing it, I was able to get him to agree. 

So I don't have very awesome before photos because I literally never thought anyone would ever read my blog so it kind of never made it to the front of my mind during this stuff until recently. 

Ok so here you can see to the left is the open door that used to be Maroon! YUCK! It had oak flooring that was SOAKED in cat pee.. So it really had to go.  We started everything by ripping that out and tiling in some really pretty gray 12 x 24 tiles. These photo's are from the listing online.. Sorry...

On the far left here you can somewhat see the closet that was there. I'm now kicking myself for not taking before photos... 

Jordan started out by ripping out the flooring.. AGAIN IM SO SORRY ABOUT MY HORRIBLE PHOTOS!! As you can see there are so many black stains on the underside of the wood and let me tell you, nobody should have to smell what we had to. It was insane. 

We had to lay down some thinset, then concrete board then thinset again before we could lay the tile.. It seriously thickens up the floor. 

So we did things kind of backwards. We didn't initially decide to rip out the floor. After we discovered the cat pee halfway through plans changed. So We lifted the frame of the bench up on the wall and tiled under it. Like ninjas.. 

We used pocket holes to secure the frame together and glued the MDF pieces to the wall with extra strength liquid nails. 

The design of this bench kind of evolved in my mind and this "x" was born.. I was just going to frame it in with pieces of MDF and the beadboard by it's self behind it. It just looked too plain so we went for it. I think it adds that little extra oomph you know? 

We patched it, painted it and made a top for it out of 1x6's. The ledge at the top didn't look quite finished either so we added some cove molding and some dentil molding under that. Looks WAY more polished now. I used the wood shims as a kind of textural element to the wall but now I think I would like more of a planked look.. We'll see.

After we had everything in we repainted the room and started putting in new baseboards so the damn spiders would stop crawling in from under that walls. ***shutter***

We had a pretty serious drywall patch where we ripped out the closet. That was fun... 

Seriously HUGE. 

When we moved on to the ceiling we did a paneled ceiling. The picture above is a shining example of how a little miscommunication can turn ugly. OUr front door has a sidelight next to it and the entire door is centered with the arched doorway you see here. Well, I asked Jordan if he would cut the hole centered on the door and the arched openeing. I even said make sure you find the center point of the whole door. Well he thought I just meant the actual swinging door. Ugh... So enter the ceiling medalion... 

15 bucks later we covered the hole. It was hilarious. This is after Jordan discovered that there are no studs in our ceiling because of how the roof it pitched and all that was really holding up the corners of the drywall was a little tape and a lot of sorcery. So he had to use a bunch of scrap wood to reinforce the ceiling all while we have started paneling the ceiling and glue is actively drying!! It was an adventure and definitely a test of our marriage.  

This light... **SWOON** It's my new favorite thing in my house. It's so cute! It was stupid expensive so we only bought one and plan to buy the other later when we can justify spending that much again. Jordan installed my new sparkly and it looked just amazing with the medallion so I was pretty thrilled. 

Looking good pretty lady!~ 

So here's where we are now. It needs a bit more work and a bit more painting but it's coming along. I think I'll do a tutorial post when it is all done as well as a whole entry way reveal. We're inching along! 

Thanks for reading! 

Briana