Entry Way - Before & After

I know I said I’d be back with a master bathroom reveal but I’m hop, skip, and jumping over to the entry way today instead…because I’ve been procrastinating taking those after shots of the master bath I so desperately need to ring up a true reveal.  In my defense, we’re fairly certain one of the twins has the flu so I’ve been hunkered down with her.  We’ll get there, right?  You know it.  :D

Anywho, the entry way.  Entry ways are one of my favorite rooms in any house.  Just like I wrote about a back entrance awhile back, they can make or break first impressions of a house being the spot that's seen first.  They can also make or break your mood when you walk in from wherever it is you’ve been.

Here’s what ours looked like before we moved in:

I didn’t take this picture in the brightest part of the day in this room so it was feeling a little dark already and obviously, a pile of boxes doesn’t do much for aesthetics.  It was a real Debbie Downer for sure.

But, BUT, look at it now:

White paint makes magic happen...again.  For months I searched for a console table for this space and for months I came up short.  For a day I thought I had found a pretty wood one for $10 secondhand but then the girl couldn’t fit it into her car when she was driving over to my neck of the woods and I didn’t want to truck the kids 30 minutes to go pick it up.  Le sigh.  But good things come to those who wait because I found this table at Dirt Cheap a month ago for 20 DOLLARS.  Sorry for yelling but I almost wanted to in the store.  I lugged the heavy box (plus the two youngest childrens) to the car and home and, upon putting it all together, I found it was only missing a couple of (non-essential…lest someone come and prance across this thing…then we might have problems) screws.  If we find those screws really aren’t non-essential, we can always go hunt through the errant screw bins at our nearest home improvement store for replacements and no one will be any the wiser.

I grabbed a couple of things laying around the house plus a few branches off a tree outside to set on it and, even though it could still use a couple more details, it fills up that little expanse of wall quite nicely.

This entry way has a little nook to the right of the door that we didn’t know what to do with at first.

A little floor shelf that got filled with boots eventually made it’s way over and then, when we realized we really needed a place to store our coats, so did this wall rack from Ikea (though it’s price jumped up $10 since we bought it…boo). 

Of course it would be much cuter if we could have stuck a little bench with some fluffy pillows on it in that little nook but that just wouldn’t have served us well in the function department.  I had planned to paint that little shelf white to match the coat rack but that just hasn’t happened yet.

Speaking of something else that hasn’t happened yet, painting the front door.  You can kind of tell from the pictures above but it’s an off-white coming that quickly turned dingy white when the walls got a fresh coat of paint.  So, in the name of all that is fresh, it could use a new paint job.  In the name of simplicity, it’ll probably get painted white because this is still a rental and, while kitchen cabinets are ok getting a dose of color, I’m not sure everyone feels the same about the inside of a front door.  Do they?  I mean, it is easier to paint over but still…I’m just not sure.  So, white will probably be the name of the paint game. 

But, that didn’t stop me from playing around with Photoshop a few nights ago.  The fun thing is that we have almost all of these colors in leftover paint so I could take a leap for basically zero monies and paint it back white if I had to…hmmmm…

Until I decide what to do, let’s hold a fashion show a la front door, shall we?

Light Greige

This seems the most likely to appeal to anyone therefore the safest bet.

Or maybe a dark, matte charcoal?

You had to have known I'd pull this one out:

Oh green, how I heart-eyes you.

Or maybe toss some of the leftover paint from the play room up?

And last but the least likely (but most trendy for certain!), millenial pink:

Which would you choose?  Of course I’d just paint the inside of this one; the outside matches the rest of the house and I’m not here to make any big changes to the exterior.  But that brings up the question, how do you feel about front doors that are one color on the outside and another color on the inside?  Ok or should they both be the same?  All opinions welcome.  :) 

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Other sources:
'hello' picture holder: Target ($1.99 on clearance)(it's attached to the door with magnet hooks)
mirror: thrifted for $8 and spruced up
sea urchin:  Dirt Cheap but these, originally from Target
basket: yard sale find...similar
rug:  Target found at Dirt Cheap