Deep Sea Diving In The Entry

Now that all the Christmas and New Year’s festivities are behind us, it’s time to get back to our roots…The Roost roots…affectionately known around these here parts as DIY shenanigans.  Shortly before Christmas, Colby and I started revamping our entryway to make it a little more stylish and more importantly, a little more functional.  Here’s where we left off:

In the jail cell otherwise known as our entry.  We had painted the space white and installed some board and batten.  The next step in the process…painting the trim glossy white to match the walls.  To prep for painting we did our usual song and dance (picture Colby in his top hat and sporting one of those dancer cane thingies and me in my tap shoes):

Here’s the “How To Prep New Trim For Painting” process

1. Finding the exposed trim nails
2. Punching in the trim nails with a nail punch and hammer
3. Filling the holes with wood putty
4. After letting the wood putty dry, sanding it down (we like to use a Milwaukee M12 Multi-Tool with the sanding pad attachment on it…really speeds up the process and makes for a smooth finish)
5. And finally priming then painting the trim (for unfinished pine trim I usually go with two coats of primer…three or four coats on any wood knots…and then two coats of paint).

After doing all this and priming up all the trim pieces, we were left with an entry that kind of looked like this:

This was just after one coat of primer.  Here’s the view looking into the entry from the kitchen.

And here’s a view of the entry from the deck outside.  The entry is a super small space (about 4′ x 6′) so it’s extremely difficult to photograph without opening the door and snapping a quick pic of the space from outside.  And it never fails that I always need to take pictures of the entry during a snow storm (see the snow on the door).

This is when I started to freak out.  Essentially our entry is a mud room…emphasis on mud.  And mud is dirty.  After just a weekend of the entry looking like this, and several substantial snowstorms and one dirty dog, there was a decent amount of noticeable dirt on the walls.  I wiped it off…and started to freak out.  Really?!  A white MUD room?!  I questioned my decision, had nightmares about it, white paint was mocking me, ridiculing me.  I felt like the a 13 year old, band geek among the jokes.  Thanks white paint!  And then in a not so minor freak out moment that some might consider a melt down…I found a quart of blue paint leftover from painting the interior of the china hutch…and Instagramed it like a good blogger.

Then started painting with it.

And painting it and painting it and painting it.  It’s just paint right?!  If I don’t like it, I’ll repaint it…yet again.

It took awhile to paint all the walls and all the trim pieces but I got it done during New Year’s weekend.  And then we had a blue entry instead of a white one.

That pic is a bit bluer and brighter than what the walls read in real life.  It’s more like the pic below.  The color is Deep Sea Diving by Valspar and it just so happens to be another one of those ombre baluster paint colors that keeps creeping into other projects in our house.  I love how the balusters have become the color scheme for our first floor.  It turned into a spring board for the rest of our house colors.

Here’s the view of the blue entry from outside on the deck looking into the entry (the kitchen is through that doorway to the right).

I’m loving the blue…love, love, LOVING the blue.  Although I am rethinking the red door now.  But it’s winter…winter in Maine…definitely not exterior door painting season.  But we have intentions of replacing the old, steel door with a classier wood one this summer (actually…Colby wants to try building one), so the red will do until then.  Besides, it gives the entry a little patriotic feel…oh say can I see!  Let me go get my flag and sparklers.

Anyway…I’m so glad that we made the last minute switcheroo from white walls to blue.  I can’t say that I’ve ever been a fan of white wells…ever…so I don’t know what possessed me to think I would like them in the entry.  I blame holiday brain.  We still have about a gazillion and a half projects to make our entry work for us including a bench, shelf, coat hooks, and of course accessorizing.  I’m already scheming up accessory ideas.  So stay tuned for an entry onslaught this week.

Pssst…Random side note coming.  Did anyone happen to stumble upon the post-Christmas sale at Target this weekend?!  Holy 90% off madness!  I purchased five packages of shirt boxes, three packages of decorative pine cones, and three decorative wreaths for $8.98!  I couldn’t believe it!