Sprucing Up the Entryway

One of my January resolutions was to make our entryway look nicer. It wasn't hard considering it looked extremely bare. We've lived in this house for over 4 years, but I still had never really done anything in there.

Note: the photos in this post are not good. The entryway is small and has no light, and I use a point-and-shoot camera. The wall color looks different in the after pics, but I didn't paint it radioactive yellow; that's just the terrible lighting.The wall color in the before pics is much more accurate (it's like very creamy coffee). 

Here are the before pics:

And now the afters:

I re-did that little table/chest, and I actually took some before photos, so I will do a post on that later this week. All in all, I only spent about $50 doing this room. I spent $30 total on the square frames for the beautiful William Rice prints from my 2013 calendar, and about $20 total on those green cloth drawers in the closet and the little chalkboard labels for them. I already had the framed Keep Calm and Carry On print, so I repurposed it in here (it had hung in our living room since 2010, so I thought the living room could stand for a change and I like the print in here). The clock was in our living room also, but we got a new one for Christmas, so I re-purposed this one. Chris doesn't like it in here; we are agreeing to disagree while keeping it in here :-) We have had the rug for years; it was left in our very old, very used Volvo when we bought it in 2006, and it's been with us every since (though the Volvo no longer is).

Other little additions to this room: oil-rubbed bronze (ORB) hooks inside the closet door for guests' purses, and I ORBed the switch plate as well. I'd still like to ORB the hinges and doorknob of the closet door, but it's gonna be a bit of a pain because the hinges were painted over, so I'm gonna have to clean them off with mineral spirits and I just haven't felt like doing that. Another project for another day.

I love this little makeover and I feel much better about guests walking through our front door now!

Laundered

It has been almost a year since I began my journey to update the laundry room and kitchen. Whoa. And I'm still not done! But I'm thisclose when it comes to the laundry room. Check out these progress pics to see how far it's come (you can see the Before {here}):

So much that I love here in this pic. The pedestal that {we built} for our washer and dryer.
The updated hardware on the cabinet doors. A peek at {the curtains I made}. 

View of mainly the same stuff, different angle. I love those bright, colorful curtains. I also love having our brooms/mops hung and having the vacuum cleaner live right there. It didn't really have a very good permanent home prior to updating this room. The doggie door is not new (Chris and his friend Jim installed it back in 2011), but I can't rave enough about the awesomeness of having a doggie door. 

The pocket door to the left goes into our kitchen. The door directly in front (with the chalkboard) goes into our garage. It's our main coming and going door. We hung hooks for bags, purses, brief cases. Some of them I bought new at Lowe's; some of them (like the big ones the brief cases are hanging on) were old planter hangers I found in our garage from the previous owners. They have been really helpful in keeping the room organized. 

A better view of the broom hanging station/cleaning supply shelf. You can also see just a few of the many hats that Chris has. We really needed that coat and hat hanger! Chris's friend from work, Hammer, made us the cowboy boot key holder. The green bar on the wall was an old towel bar that I found under the cabinets above the washer. It had been there from the previous owners. I removed it, cleaned it up, and spray painted it that green that I'm loving right now ({Valspar Apple Gloss}). Little baskets hang from it on S-hooks and keep extra sunglasses, cell phone arm bands, and gloves in the winter. 

I guess I maybe should have staged this better and taken most of this stuff off so that it was only sparsely filled, but I really wanted this reveal to be realistic. This is what we're using this stuff for! 

Oh, the command center. I love it. I talk more about creating it {here}, so I'll just point out that the fabric background matches the curtains, then reiterate how much I love it. And how cool dry erase crayons are.

The drying bar! How did we live without it before??? That alien-looking blue thing is the {Pressa drying rack} from Ikea. It's kind of awkward, but it's really nice for indoor drying of socks, tee shirts, etc. The space below the hanging bar is still waiting to be properly finished. I want to put some kind of clothes-folding table there. 

I really, really like this chalkboard. We had a ceiling light in our kitchen when we moved in; the leafy metal thing (at the time, it was finished in oil-rubbed bronze) was the decorative frame around the light fixture. Well, the fixture flat out died, no bringing it back from the dead. So we removed it and replaced it with a ceiling fan (I don't care what blog people say, when you live in the South, ceiling fans are the best!). But I knew this beautiful frame could be re-purposed  so I kept for a couple of years. Lo and behold, I decided I wanted a chalkboard on the door and this was the perfect frame. I spray painted it with Valspar Apple Gloss. The chalk board it just a circle of {Valspar chalkboard paint} applied directly to the door (three coats). 

I got these little mesh baskets at Tuesday Morning and the wooden letters at Hobby Lobby
(spray painted with {Rustoleum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover in Satin Lagoon}). 

This is an {extra-large open-top L.L. Bean Boat and Tote bag} that I got years ago (the color is Marigold, but they don't appear to offer it anymore). We keep all of our clothes that need to be dry-cleaned in here. And they pretty much never leave because we rarely take things to be dry-cleaned. But the bag is pretty!

So.....here is a run-down of what we did to the laundry room:

• Added planking to top half of wall
• Trimmed out planking (with some family help)
• Added chair rail (with some family help)
• Painted planking, cabinets, and ceiling
• Painted drywall
• Painted trim
• Added new hardware
• Lined shelves
• Built washer dryer pedestal
• Built cleaning supply shelf/broom rack
• Added hat rack
• Added purse/bag hooks
• Created chalkboard on door
• Created command station
• Added baskets to hold everyday stuff
• Added drying/hanging rod
• Made and hung curtains

And here's what we still have to do:

• Fix cabinet clasps in a couple of cabinets
• Touch up some cabinet paint
• Clean up white paint lines around window mullions
• Build clothes folding shelf
• Prettify dog food container
• Spackle and paint mistake holes
• Get pretty rug
• Get pretty light fixture
• Bring light switch panels out so they're flush with walls (now that paneling has made walls thicker)
• Organize medicine et al in cabinets

And maybe eventually we'll:

• Build better/prettier cleaning supply shelf (something more like {this})
• Maybe re-paint walls a crisp white (??)
• Update doors on cabinets to something more architecturally interesting and newer/cleaner

So that's where we're at right now. Progress. Major progress. And our first real DIY project. It pretty much taught me that Chris is good at building stuff, but doesn't really enjoy it. And this is supposed to be fun, not a chore for him. So I'm trying to do projects that I can mainly complete on my own so he can use his very limited free time to do stuff that is fun and relaxing for him. But I'm so glad that we've learned that pretty early on and didn't rip out our kitchen or something. Learning on a relatively tiny project like the laundry room has been just fine!

Home Maintenance on the Cheap:

Slow-Running Faucet

It's weird, but one of the things in life that truly brings me joy is being able to correctly fix something in my home on my own (or Chris being able to fix something, which happens more often). Seriously, one of the best feelings ever. Built circa 1958, our house is old - for Texas (cue snickering and scoffing from the folks in New England, where it's not uncommon for people to live in houses built in the 18th and 19th centuries).  But, for whatever reason, houses here that have been around for longer than 10 years are considered "older." So ours is basically ancient. And I get a little anxious and dramatic when I think something in the house is broken. Therefore, when the faucet in our master bathroom sink started running slowly a while back, I almost had a meltdown. I convinced myself that there was a major pipe leak between the road and the bathroom pipes and that we were about to have to shell out some major money for a repair. Then I picked myself up off the floor, wiped away the tears, and started actually thinking clearly (kidding about the floor and the tears...yeah, kidding). I decided to clean the aerator screen (the little screen on the very end of the faucet) and see if that would help. I cleaned the aerator screen, returned it to the faucet and, lo-and-behold, the water came gushing out at the normal speed. Hallelujah! And all it took was some white vinegar and a pair of pliers. This weekend, I noticed the faucet running a little slowly again, so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and give the screen a good cleaning, then put pictures and instructions on the blog to help people who may run into a similar problem. Happy maintaining!

~Liz