House Update: The Foyer

I have been meaning to do this post for my friends who have asked for it, but I'm finally getting a moment to sit down and update about something other than Preston. While this blog may not always show it, we do have more going on than just living vicariously through our child. :)

The biggest being our house. I'll leave out the fact that we have a hole in our living room ceiling right now, an "out of order" bathroom that will soon be demolished, and an oven that caught on fire last night (yes, flames that required a fire extinguisher to put them out. Thank goodness we actually keep one in our kitchen!) We curse our house regularly, but we always make up with it pretty quickly, because we have space, nice neighbors, and a great location.

Anyway, the foyer. The subject of our foyer was a rough one for a while. It was quite possibly the ugliest foyer we had ever seen in our lifetime. I am also pretty sure it was the reason our house was on the market for 9 months before Brian and I were crazy enough to buy it. Many people looked at our house when it was for sale. We have talked to some of those people, and they would always say, "Now, that was the house with the awful foyer, right?" And we would answer with, "Yep." It was stuck in 1964.

Previous owners stuff

Front door and high ceilings.

Stairwell

Still with previous owners stuff.

Upstairs. P's bedroom on left, ours on right.

Other side of upstairs hallway. Guest room, hall bath and office on this side.

It was bad. The wallpaper that went sky-high, the mustard trim and wainscoting, the vast size of the foyer that encompassed two hallways upstairs and downstairs. You can see the foyer from just about every single room of the house.

The foyer was SO dark. The best way to describe it was that everything was just yellow. The ceiling was painted an off-white. There is also no natural sunlight in the foyer. In thinking about remodeling, we knew we wanted it to feel lighter, brighter, and bring it into this millennium.

So, first we hired a contractor. While we usually do projects on our own, we were both a little nervous about the ladders/scaffolding that stripping the walls would take. Plus, we knew it would take us forever. In the quotes we received, they all told us about a week. That was a big factor for us, since we knew it was going to be a messy project. Our contractor, Dustin, was great and his team did an awesome job.

Stripping the paper was the hardest part. Poor guys. They were dying. At this point, we were so happy we paid people to do this project!

Were the walls prepped before the paper was put on? Of course not!

The stripping of the paper made a huge mess. We literally had to deep clean every room of our house 3 or 4 times to get all of the dust up. The guys had to put two skim coats to prep the walls for painting.

Close-up of the wallpaper. I know, we were CRAZY to want to take this down ;)

Suddenly, the foyer started coming into this century. We would come home from work and be so excited!

Now that's more like it!

For the trim, we matched the rest of the house with Benjamin Moore White Dove. The walls are Benjamin Moore Tapestry Beige. I wanted a light linen color that would blend with the rest of our neutrals. This was the perfect choice! We are so pleased with it. We also painted the ceiling a bright white to make it seem lighter. Painting the ceiling made a huge difference.

**Tip for the walls: Brian's aunt is an interior designer and she gave us this tip. We painted the walls one solid color, but above the chair rail, we painted an eggshell finish and below we painted a semi-gloss finish. It gives such a nice effect to the walls, and makes the bottom portion stand out just a touch. LOVE that tip!

Now, here it is, with our stuff moved back in!

My friend Sarah Ella is making me a frame to go on this wall. 

Gallery wall along the upstairs hallway.

Our paint colors worked! It is so much brighter. In total, the painters had to paint 11 doors (front and back, including trim) and two large closets in addition to the walls. Worth every penny. Painting over those dark mustard doors is a nightmare.

I think my favorite though might be the upstairs hallway. We did a gallery wall of white Ikea frames, and I LOVE it. We are still working on filling it with fun things. I am glad that our marriage survived the hanging of so many frames ;) Thanks Brian for fulfilling my design dreams!!!

Slowly, but surely this house is coming together!