Lately I’ve been doing a decent amount of thinking…musing over the functionality of our house. Especially in a small house, such as ours, where every square inch has to work overtime in the functionality department. One space that I always question is the entry.
It’s cute and adorable when it’s all picked up and cleaned up. Unfortunately, that’s not terribly often. Most days it looks like this:
And that’s not even the worst it’s ever looked. The entry is a drop zone…we drop our shoes, our bags, groceries, you name it. The shoe pile alone can take over the entire space. This is the shoe pile after I already put most of my shoes away upstairs.
The table surface can also get a little out of control. It often holds my work tote during the week. It’s the bag I use to lug home flyers for editing, SEO books for reading, and supplier marketing proposals to review.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that our entry just isn’t working for us. It looks cute (when it’s clean) but it’s not functional. We need a drop zone, an area to put on/store shoes, and a place to hold our daily coats. In retrospect, I should have taken a pic of our kitchen table. It also holds many of our “drop zone” stuff including jackets…oh the jacket insanity! For some reason, which I can’t explain, we drape our coats over the kitchen chairs instead of hanging them up in the coat closet right beside the table. I chalk it up to shear laziness. It’s time to reclaim our table! So here’s the plan:
You can check out my entry inspiration, or should I say “Pin-Spiration” on…wait for it…Pinterest. Check me out on Pinterest here.
- Board and batten entry from House And Home
- Painted entry shelf from Martha Stewart
- Rustic bench from Dream Book Design
So the plan for the entry is to install some board and batten to add a little architectural interest to the otherwise plain Jane space. Which means painting the walls white and then installing the wood on top of it. Then, once the board and batten base is all done, building a rustic bench using up some of our scrap wood that’s just been taking up space in the basement. And finally, building a coat rack for the wall to provide a spot to hang my work bag and our coats. We may also want to incorporate a basket or bin for hats and mittens in the winter and a place to stow boots, maybe underneath the bench.
We started working on the space this weekend and have managed to paint the walls white and install the board and batten (more on that later). But how about an empty space pic since I failed to take a single pic of the room after painting it white. #bloggerfail
And now for the part of the blog post where the odd title finally comes in to play. The entry was one of the first spaces in the house that we “finished” circa summer of 2010. Now would be a good time to remind you that it used to look like this back then:
But we redid it (floor, paint, lighting, etc.) before we really knew the direction of our home. We picked the mint green color on a whim not because it went with the whole house color scheme, and we weren’t always certain the entry would stay forever. There was talk of ripping it right out and opening it up to the kitchen. But now we know it’s going to stay and can move ahead and turn the space into something more functional and more importantly, permanent.
So now I have a ridiculous amount of board and batten to caulk, prime and paint. More on the project tomorrow including installation instructions.
Pssst…While we were busy painting and constructing away in the entry this weekend, what were you up to? Anyone out there also tackling an entry project? Do share! We love hearing what you’re up to! Especially if it’s no good! Haha! Get it?! Up to no good?!
