The Entry way

 Next up is the Entry way.  It's a little spot with a whole lot of man hours involved.  The problem when we bought this house was in the floor plan.  You opened that front door and there was a little pocket door to your right that led into the kitchen and then this awesome Pella door into a formal living room.

Brown carpet and drapes.  That's all that you saw in this room.  Then on the right was another Pella door into the family/dining/kitchen area.  We knew this closed floor plan would not work for us so we decided to take out the wall separating the living and the family rooms.

 That was another good day.  It felt so much bigger and made a lot more sense this way.  Then John and his dad had to take out the wall that you see on the left of this picture since we wanted to lose the pocket door.  They knocked everything down then had to rebuild that portion of the wall to make the new entry way.

After John taped and sanded and taped and sanded and taped and sanded his new wall it was time to  blend in the ceiling texture so you wouldn't be able to tell that there had been a wall there.  I was constantly amazed by the skills and abilities of my husband through out all these projects.  Who taught him how to do all this stuff and what tools and materials he was going to need?  He is amazing.

John and my dad had a system down for texturing, John would slap the stuff up there first.

Then my dad would smooth out the rough spots with his knock-down knife.

They had to fan the texture way out so that it would all be seamless.

Lest you forget we did have 5 kids to deal with as all this stuff was taking place.  At first, I tried coming and going with the kids thinking it was easier to not have them in the middle of everything, but I needed to be there to tell John what I wanted.  Plus it drove me crazy to sit at home and do nothing when there was so much to do at the new house.  So we finally just resigned ourselves to bringing them every morning with a cooler of fruit and chips and whatever toys we could fit into the van that day.

Sometimes it was absolutely horrible.  We'd be painting or pulling out carpet or sanding something and they would be fighting with each other or screaming for another cookie or whining about being bored or stepping on nails or falling off ladders.  But still it was just better to be all together working to get this thing done.   

Finally it was time to paint the walls in the entry way. I went really dark with the grey since I was planning on going with super tall bead board.

I explained to John what my vision was and as I said before he just went to work to create it.  Have I mentioned yet how in awe I was of him through out this renovation project?

Once the bead board and trim was up we knocked out the old tiles in the entry way.

John's dad came over to help out since John hadn't had much experience with tile before.  My mom had a really cool idea how to lay out the pattern and minimize the number of cuts they would have to make. 

Once we had it all planned out John and his dad got to cutting.  Most people would use a tile saw for this project but we didn't have one handy so they used a circular saw with a masonry blade.  We don't recommend that but it was ok for this little job.

Oh boy, that is pretty tile.  We want to use this tile again somewhere else because we love it so much.  Maybe a bathroom renovation down the road.....?

After the tile had set for 24 hours my mom and I grouted it.  Just so you know we did this at about 2:00 am one night when we slept over.  We got our best work done when there were no kids around undoing all our work.

So here is the entry way before.  Notice that little pocket door there..

The entry way a little further back into that formal living room.

Here's after. 

The view from the hall into the entry way before:

and after:

Johns new wall before:

and after:

and the view from the entry way into the hall before:

and after:

As with everything in the house there are still a few more things we need to do in this entry way, crown molding,  a new window,
 and a cool light fixture but for now it's just fine.  

Next up THE LIVING ROOM!!

p.s. that awesome growth chart was 

made by my brother in law.  

Don't you just love it!?!