Renovations and Progress // Front Entry

If you ever see my IG stories you may have seen how one week during all of this reno stuff that we've got going on around here, Brian had to leave for an out of town work trip and that left me here all alone with a sledge hammer...bad news people, bad news.

If you hear Brian talk about the reno process he will refer to each project as part of a phase.

Phase I-the kitchen.

Phase II- the built ins.

Phase III- bathrooms and so on......

If you talk to me....its ALL PHASE I and needless to say that makes him want to slowly kill me....in the most loving way of course.

Before

Originally upon walking into the front door you were greeted smack in the face with a set of closets. I refer to it as the giant BOX O CLOSETS in the center of the house. One closet was in front of the front door, one was in the bedroom (which will be our den) to the left of the front door and the other was a shelved closet directly in front of the stairs. Good storage options, bad design.

So this closet situation had me all in a tizzy because I seriously could not imagine living here and greeting my guests at a front door that was so cramped. I also do not like the idea that when you walk in to the house, you are immediately in the living room. I like to ease in to a space and there was no easing here. It was BAM you're now in my living space and well, I guess I've now invited you in whether I meant to or not. Maybe its not all that bad but you can see where Im going with this and even though I preach to my kids not to hate anything...this I hated. I HATED IT!

This brings me to the time when Brian left town....this is a theme in our relationship if you've followed us for awhile now. He leaves, I tear it up (the house, I mean..ha:) and he comes back and puts it all back together, but better, waaayyy better!

This was a beast to take down and what a mess but boy am I happy I did!

Thankfully I have my helpers when dads away.

So much better already but that wasn't easy!

This all needed to come down but because I wasn't able to get this all on my own I had to wait for the big guns to get back home and he took care of the rest.

Here you can see how the floors were pretty tore up and the ceramic tile that had been put in sometime after the home was built. Brian would eventually demo all of this flooring so that the floor ran smoothly throughout the downstairs and there were no thresholds to worry about.

And look now you open the front door and you have a clear and pretty sightline all the way to the staircase. This feels so much better already.

Next on the agenda was to frame out the new entry way and even this disaster makes me smile because I can see the house changing already and I love it!

Brian cut out all of the old flooring down to the original subfloor . The dry wall was hung and whoa look how stinking gorgeous that is! We also painted the stairs with Sherwin Williams Porch and Floor Enamel in Inkwell..which I believe is my new favorite color!

I can feel some wood trim in this color in the near future...

Here is a little before and after of the stairs...

BEFORE