Entryway Makeover Reveal

In April, Handy Hubs and I began remodeling our entryway.

Last spring/summer I painted the entryway a country blue color (NOT what I was going for originally and unfortunately I still don’t love it). I also removed the front door and the door to the garage and gave them fresh paint. While that little project freshened up the entryway, it still needed a complete overhaul.

This project took a few weekends to complete.  I envisioned a wood elevated bench built into the closet space, with two shelves high above for storage such as baskets of hats, gloves, scarves, summer items, etc. We would install boards on the interior walls to make it look like wainscoting and leave the space open without a door.

I turned to Pinterest to find a few ideas and to my sketch book to measure out our existing space and create a plan that HandyHubs could use to visualize my big dreams. Our entryway is more of a platform between two levels with a fairly low ceiling that doesn’t allow for a fancy pendant light or chandelier in the entryway. I have always wanted a high ceiling in my home – however, I can settle happily for pretty and practical instead!!

We began by removing the ugly wood shutter bi-fold doors from the entryway closet area. The interior of the closet is basically a shelf with a clothing bar under it to hold coats.  The shoes were piled up on the floor under the coats and the shelf was stacked full of board games and puzzles no one ever touched.

Once we removed everything from the area and did our little bit of demo work to the closet we began scraping the linoleum from the floor. We had purchased beautiful wood look tile at Lowe’s for our flooring and we were chomping at the bit to get it in!

HandyHubs and I scraped, cleaned and prepped for tile installation all in one day. The following day we mudded and tiled the small space with very few issues. The tile changed the small space completely and helped lead us to our finalized plans for the entire space.

We framed out a bench for the closet with individual 1×4 boards for the bench seating sanded and stained dark. Built in framing was added for the two shelves spaced to hold baskets for storage. We used 1×2 boards to trim out the walls of the closet to mimic wainscoting. A fresh coat of Sherwin Williams Oyster Bay was used for the top half around the shelves while SW Alabaster was used for the rest. HandyHubs added custom trim for the floorboards and the closet opening – fixing the uneven cut of the original opening. To top things off, HH installed a lovely little light inside the closet along with an outlet and a garage door button! I love that I have a light in our new little nook and that I can control the garage door from inside the house.

I shopped around for the perfect hooks for our leashes, coats, bags and keys for the space, some seasonal pillows and of course baskets. The final space is warm, inviting and just perfectly perfect.

Thank you for reading about our lovely little entryway makeover. Hope it inspires you!

Until next time,

XO –
Merideth