The Great Revival of our Foyer

Sweet hallelujah!  Oh wait, it’s not THAT kind of revival, however it is kind of like God has shone a light down on our entryway and given it new life – or maybe it’s our new light fixture.  Well, either way, our entryway looks NOTHING like it did when we bought our home – which is a definitely a good thing.

When I first walked into our home (almost 3 years ago – holy moly!), I felt like I was walking into either a townhome or a home with a basement suite – NOT a 2 storey single family detached home.  The entryway was like a secret warren of walls, doors, passages and I half expected a gnome to come through one and say ‘right this way madam, to the dungeon family room’.  Okay, seriously, it wasn’t that bad – our home has always been beautiful, but it DID need a little bit of TLC (or KLC if you’re so inclined).

And while it may have taken almost 3 years it’s FINALLY done!

BTW, I want you to play the ‘Where’s Doug’ game.  See if you can find all 4 Doug’s (and one Henry).

The main entryway area

Did you notice all of the changes?

Before:  A cased doorway leading to the family room / After:  No door OR doorway

Before:  Solid drywall that hid the upstairs area from view / After:  Wood and metal curved railing

Before:  Ugly pine beam over the header underneath the curved wall / After:  No ugly beam

Before:  While you can only see it in the very FIRST photo, there used to be 12×12 tile flooring which had IMPOSSIBLE colours in it.  It also transitioned to ANOTHER ugly tile at the doorway to the familyroom /  After:  We decided to take our new flooring almost everywhere, creating much more flow

And I knew that ONE day this curved wall would be LONG gone, as would the walls going up the stairway.  It’s actually amazing that it took me 3 years to bring out the sledgehammer (who am I kidding, I hired someone to do the dirty work and sat back and drank wine by the jug…with a straw).

Before, who even KNEW what was up there???

After, the light from both the entryway AND the upstairs great room co-mingle, creating a bright, open space.  And check out what really IS up there in this post, ‘Our Living Room Update’

The paint colours are…

• Light Colour: Sherwin Williams Creamy SW 7012
• Grayish Colour: Benjamin Moore Steel Wool 2121-20

From the stair landing

From the middle stair landing, you could see that there was a LOT of air space (being a 2 storey foyer) as well as a lot of…wall.

See the changes?

Before:  Drywall on the right hand side of the stairs / After:  Wood and metal railing

Before:  Fugly pine molding capping the foundation wall on the right / After:  More traditional white molding on the foundation wall and YES I was soooo tempted to do shiplap, but I’m hesitant to commit to a trend that will require major wall-patching once I’m over it (so in like 3 months)

Before:  Top left curved wall / After:  Top left curved railing

Before:  While you can’t see it, there was a multi-armed light fixture straight outta 1996 / After: With scaffolding, a good friend and some good beer, we got a new light fixture up (and the old one is still sitting on our back deck rusting)

From the front door

Here’s the view coming in the front door…and yes, that IS a big bad ass clock.

And did you know that this armoire used to be THIS armoire below?  I painted the heckadoody out of it in about 3 hrs with Rustoleum ‘Chalked’ Ultra Matte Paint.

Now let’s take it from the top!

Before, this is really where I felt like we were in a narrow townhome, which would obviously be fine…if we lived in a narrow townhome.

If was a pretty dark, dense look – which I like in some rooms, but I wasn’t feeling it for this large, bright area.

After, you can REALLY see how things opened up and brightened up.  And you can probably see a flash of my lovely chartreuse doors in the top photo, which will soon be changed to Hale Navy (can’t wait!).

Ahhhh, there she is – my beautiful 1990’s light!  Epic photo quality, I know.  At the time I wasn’t planning on becoming world famous with these photos…

Doug alert!  And seriously, he’s such a poser.  I’m not sure if this was before or after he ate 5 granola bars from the pantry.

Before: Again, epic photo quality by yours truly…

I love this view, and while it was a close one (thanks to a messy contractor), we managed to keep the carpet on the stairs, helping to keep the budget in line!

Before:  Wall on the left side of the stairs / After:  Wood and metal railing

Before:  Disturbingly black railing on the right side (I like black railings…just not this one) / NO hand railing

Before:  No dogs / After:  The installation of a dog/pig and a Muppet at the top of the stairs.  And yes, the poor lil’ bugger has a skin condition that he takes prednisone for, hence the pinkish tone.  The other one had a golden retreiver Mom and Animal from the Muppets as a dad.

So there it is!  Want to see how it jives with the rest of our home?  Check these out!

Our Maple Bathroom Remodel

No More Maple Kitchen Update

Our Family Room

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