Entryway Continued

I just have to start out by saying that I love nothing more that opening up my front door, latching the screen door so the cats can't escape and listening to the sound of a glorious rain shower.  I just wanted to curl up on the couch with a soft fuzzy blanket and daydream my entire morning away.  Fortunately, the more sensible side of me intervened and convinced myself that I could actually get some much needed work done and still enjoy the rain shower.
Well, enough of my rant.... To pick up where I left off yesterday, I am posting some more pictures of the projects I completed in my entryway remodel.  The first picture is a better view of the bench that is the first thing you see when you walk through our front door.

After I finished the insanity of painting the checkers, I moved on to the facings of my stairs.  Before they were just plain white; I painted them the Full Moon by Sherwin Williams.  I then went on a great hunt online for some designs I liked and then got out my handy stencil plastic and traced the designs to cut out and make my own stencils.  Here is the end result:

Once my knees recovered from stenciling the stairs, I moved onto the stairwell.  I painted the banisters black.  I have not completed one side of the stairwell, but I did get it all painted a red color my husband picked out called Ablaze by Sherwin Williams. On the red wall shown, I used the same tissue technique described in my previous post to add texture to the walls. On the stairwell wall that you can't see I want to use paper mache to make dimensional branches, butterflies and birds to hide some of the imperfections on the wall.

One of my final projects in the entryway was to make a stencil with the initial of our last name to go in the inset panels that separate the entryway from the living room. Oh! and I also decided to do something about the eyesore of a doorbell that we had hanging so I bought a small wood decorative piece and attached it over the speaker and silver leafed the whole thing.

Well, that pretty much covers what I have accomplished so far in the entryway.  As I mentioned earlier I still need to find a perfect Armoire to house our coats and such as well as a rug.  I also want to take a stained glass class someday and redo our little window which had a faux stained glass application on it when we bought the house.

Here is to another day of decorating and dreaming....