The New Place - The Entryway

Continuing the house tour!

The entryway (it is not big enough to be called a foyer) is an interesting challenge in this place. On one hand, it's nice that you don't walk straight into the living room. On the other, this come-in-a-door-and-then-turn-90-degrees-through-another-door was a pain for furniture. If you also have more than one or two people entering at once, it is VERY difficult to get your shoes off. 

This is the before picture. Actually, it's somewhat an in progress picture, because there was an old window shelf/hook combo on the wall where all those holes are. Because the walls are plaster, the holes are not easy to repair. We originally talked about getting a stand up coat hanger so that we wouldn't put any more holes in the walls, but we had to do something to cover up all of this damage. 

I had bought six really nice wrought iron coat hooks for the Hunter St house that I took with me when I left (yes, that's me, taking stuff off the walls when I leave the house). So we already had those, plus there was a bunch of lumber in the basement that the landlady said we could do whatever with. So Tim grabbed a piece of lumber, hand sawed it to length, and painted it with the same spray paint he did the flagpole and mailbox with. Once it had dried, he spent a LOT of time cursing as he tried to screw the hooks into the wood. Apparently the screws were very cheap and were stripping and breaking at the heads and just generally being a huge pain in the you-know-what. However, with a little magic marker, all of the breaks and stripping and the silver screws he eventually resorted to became black and looked wonderful. 

This picture is a bit blurry (it's from my cell, I'll get a better actual camera one at some point), but this project turned out so well. It covers all of the holes that were already in the wall - we only had to make three new ones. Plus it gives great coat/hat/umbrella storage, which we desperately needed. 

The next step is to put in some sort of shoe storage. Right now they just all get thrown in a somewhat-neat pile on the ground. I think I'd like something like these:

3-Drawer Shoe Cabinet from The Container Store - $119.00 USD and it's only 6" deep.

Hemnes Shoe Cabinet from Ikea - $169.00 CDN and it's 11-3/4" deep.

Stall Shoe Cabinet from Ikea - $129.00 CDN and it's 6-3/4" deep. 

The depth of the shoe cabinet will be pretty crucial due to the limited space in this area. The Hemnes one would match my current bedroom set, but I doubt that will be enough of a draw to negate the extra 5" of space we'd need. They all hold different numbers of shoes, too. The Container Store cabinet holds a minimum of six pairs, while the Stall cabinet holds a minimum of eight and the Hemnes one holds at least twelve. Since it's just Tim and I, I think having four pairs of shoes apiece downstairs would be sufficient. Eventually we'll need a boot tray as well for winter footwear.