Entryway {Mood Board}

Since everything in our house is ugly and it's overwhelming to think about trying to tackle anything inside...the entryway seems like a safe choice for the first real indoor project.  Ironically our entryway is almost exactly the same color as our old kitchen before we painted it.  It's a wine/burgundy red color and the previous owners had 57 pictures on the walls - yes I counted.  It screams dated to me and it is not us at all.  There are a ton of nail holes and the walls look streaky like they are dusty but you can't wipe it off.  Our old kitchen had the same look to it so I am convinced it is something with the paint color or it's a bad paint job.

We struggle with home style but the little bit of reno we did in our old house - we definitely lean more towards modern/cool styling and colors.  Modern mixed with some traditional/transitional elements.  We really liked having a gray walls - it is the one color we can agree on so obviously the natural choice is to make everything gray, right?  It made our house look so much brighter and the color we picked changed with the lighting which was something we liked.  The husband is actually colorblind so I pick paint colors and he gives his opinion.  Now that we have a few colors we like, we will probably keep with the same themes in this house.

My chief complaints about the entryway are:
1) Dark
2) Shiny brass light fixture
3) Wooden light switch plates (every room in our house has at least 3 different switch plate styles)
4) The honey colored front door
5) Shiny brass/gold door hardware
6) Terrible flooring
7) Boring doors and outdated hardware

So basically that list means everything in the entryway is a fail but luckily most of that is immediately fixable.  The entire house needs new flooring and we haven't even started talking about that so the tiles stay for now.  I have a jute rug that is in the entry and it will stay.  Another interesting fact about Midland (I have never heard of this before) is that many of the AC systems - the vents are trenched into the foundations.  Our return air vent is trenched under the front of our house and the return vents are by the front door under a closet - so it runs from the garage to the front door.  This is something we argued with the sellers about but they would not seal off and reroute the vent through the ceiling (they can be massive health hazards).  We have a hall closet but the front entry closet is elevated above the return vent and it has a horrible piece of 70s carpet on the floor.  That is coming out too and we will probably just seal the floor somehow.  Haven't pulled it up to see what is underneath the carpet.

Because that closet door is elevated, we need a flush mount light fixture so it won't hit when you open the door.  My intention is to carry the light fixture into our hallways so I tried to pick something cost conscious because I need four of them.

So the tentative plan is this mood board...which I have not run by the husband.  The vibe I am going for is trying to bring in as much light as possible into the space.  Right now it's like a grape cave and this house needs all the brightening up it can get.  Lightening up the paint color with Sherwin Williams Agreeable Grey will make the biggest bang for our buck.  We also will paint all of the trim and ceiling to brighten it up.  We like Sherwin Williams so we also use Ceiling Bright White and Extra White on trim.  We need to replace all of the doors in this house and the front closet is a custom size.  We have those plain, flat wood doors from the late 70s/early 80s.  I have read/watched a lot of tutorials about adding moulding to the doors but these doors are in rough shape and probably not worth salvaging.

One thing we don't necessarily agree on is art colorings.  We both like abstract art but M wants more red and I like happier, soothing prints.  I order all our Christmas/moving/announcement cards off Minted and they have a great selection of art.  I pulled both of these off the website because they fit the feel I am interested in.  Our entry is too narrow to put any furniture but there is a spot in the living room right when you walk in that I think would be great for some sort of table.

For the front door, I need to find my paint fan and pull a darker color out of the brick.  Our door is orange facing the outside and honey blonde wood on the inside.  The trim on our house is a creamy beige.  I will sand everything down and repaint it - probably Porpoise because there are hints of green in the brick and that color gives off more green than the chip shows.

So far so good - it's a start!!  It's a small enough space that we can take a decent bite out of the house and not feel like it's the never ending project (cough cough - the river rocks outside - cough cough).