Let the Home Remodel Begin....

I decided that since I began remodeling our house before I decided to start blogging, I would do a little back tracking and show the projects I have accomplished so far.  I decided to start the remodeling in the most logical place...the entryway.  I have pretty well finished everything in the entryway except paint the front door and locate the perfect armoire and rug.

Here are some before pictures(you will have to forgive the quality of some of the photos as I took them with a camera phone). I really did not take enough before photos of the entryway so there is much you will not be able to see, but I think you can still get the idea of what it looked like.

As you can see the trim and molding were white and the rest was painted a dark green.  It really made the entryway look sad.

Here I had everything scraped and sanded down.  As you can see on the left I had already painted the walls a pretty blue color.

When I first started the renovations in the entryway my perfectionism came out and I tried to patch the plaster walls and get everything sanded to a nice even finish.  After several attempts at getting everything perfectly smooth, I came to the realization that it was not going to happen.  I got creative in how I could give the walls texture without costing a  lot of money.  I know it may sound crazy, but I used tissue paper and diluted glue.  I crumpled up the tissue and then opened it back up and tore in pieces.  I used a small roller and rolled on the wall a thin layer of the diluted glue and then placed the pieces of tissue on the wall and went back over it with the roller and glue mixture. I let the tissue cure and dry on the wall for 24 hours and then painted the walls a blue color called Dazzle by Sherwin Williams.  The trim and molding were painted a yellow called Full Moon also by Sherwin Williams.In the inset panels on the stairway in the entry, I decided to channel my inner Mackenzie- Childs and paint a checkered pattern.  I measured each panel and then drew in the checkers lightly labeling which were to be black and which were to be white.  I then embarked on my journey down the lane of insanity.  I hand-painted the checkered pattern in panels.  There are still some that I think I need to fix as I walk up the stairway, but have since decided to ignore the urge to fiddle with it anymore.  I did not feel ambitious enough to make the bench cushion, so I enlisted the assistance of Calico Corners for that (you can see a glimpse of the Fleur De Lis patterned material we chose to use in one of the pictures below).

For some reason the yellows all look different in each picture, but they are all the same pale light yellow called Full Moon.

To keep this posting from being a million miles long, I will break it up a bit and post more on my entryway renovations tomorrow!

Until then, keep on dreaming and creating...

Krista