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!