Hi everyone! Over the weekends of the past month and a half or so we’ve been busy working on our entryway. Having now at least partially set up all the rooms we really use, we decided we should prioritize by prettifying the first thing people see when they come in.
I don’t have any images to show you what the area has looked like for the past year, but here’s what it looked like when we bought the house:

and here’s what it looked like after we ripped up the carpets (but before we had the floors done):

And here’s after the wallpaper came off. This is pretty close to what we’ve been living with for a year except for the floors. Yes, it’s quite a familiar view…

We’ve done a lot of stuff here (who knew you could spend so long on what is essentially a hallway?). We painted the walls. I got a little tired of the gobi desert in our living room and our bedroom so I convinced Matt to let me spice it up a bit (I’m not sure it’s legal to ever call beige ’spicy’ but Matt put some tight reigns on me…) by mixing gobi desert half and half with white. It’s barely noticeable, but at least I got to do something a little more interesting. So here it is:

There are a number a changes you can see in this image. The first one you may notice is the light fixture. I’ve been seeing this Ikea light everywhere in recent designs (in particular on apartment therapy) and it’s been slowly growing on me. Finally, I decided we needed some ‘drama’ in the entryway - so here it is. It actually came with a regular wall plug so Matt bought a cover plate, cut off the cord, and wired it into the ceiling. You can see the new painted walls and trim. You can also see the anti-slip protection we added to the stairs for Ginger (cork drawer-liner material), who had previously been falling down the stairs nearly every day. Finally, you can see some things that are still unfinished, the front door and the unpainted stair rail thingies, but just ignore them, ok? Painting the stair trim and rises was very time-consuming, but I am proud to say that I am now fairly competent at painting edges without any tape.
Here’s a better view of the light and Matt’s handywork:

Matt has also been working on wiring up a new doorbell, which is surprisingly large. It is nice being able to hear when people are at the door though. He also replaced the old thermostat, which made weird cricket noises constantly that I thought I would never get used to (but I did).

You may have noticed the interesting collage on the stair wall. This is something I started working on when we visited my parents in June. I scanned, processed, and printed some family photos. Here’s a better view:

I’m kind of disappointed in it, but I’ve spent so long on it that I’m fed up and it’s just going to have to be this way for a while. It’s a family tree, at least my half. You can see me, Matt, and Ginger on the lower right. Each row is a generation, including all direct ancestors and their siblings (up to my grandparents generation). Parents are positioned roughly above their children, which coincidentally come in pairs in my family as a rule. Buying 22 frames can get expensive. I couldn’t find any decent frames in appropriate colors for a reasonable price. I found these on sale at (where else) ikea, but they also didn’t have an appropriate color, at least in stock. So I thought, ‘oh, it’ll be really easy just to spray paint them white’ and ‘it’s such a good price!’. Uh uh, not so much. My efforts spray painting them were a disaster (not sure why, maybe that particular can was faulty). Anyway, to make a long story short, I’ve been painting them white. I got tired of the painting and thought maybe a mixture of white and the original silver would look cool. Well, it doesn’t. It looked cool before I put the pictures/backing/glass in them (like an abstract sculpture), but now it just looks crazy crowded and weird. I guess I will take them down at some point and maybe finish painting them white, but I’m sick of them right now.
Moving on to something more positive, here’s a different view:

and one more:

It’s our new shoe cabinet! I’m not sure it’s coming across in the photos, but we’re very exciting about how it fits in this spot, it looks like it’s meant to be there. It clears up much needed floor space in the entry closet, and gives a very useful surface. Yay.