Foyer Renovation Before and After

It was a long time coming, but I finally did some renovations to my foyer.  The Main thing I did was to seal all of the edges around the floorboards and paint the walls white.  

I decided to go with white for the floor is well. Since moving to this house, I often felt that the foyer was very dark and creepy.  I decided I wanted everything to be all white so I could see any little creatures that were moving along the floor.  I think the white floor is going to be hard to keep clean, especially because we don't have a paved driveway in our yard, yet. Because of that, when it rains, which is very often here in Virginia, the yard gets very muddy, and we end up tracking mud all over the house.  

In these "before photos," you can see the wallpaper that was original to the house when we bought it.  The wallpaper is actually in fairly good condition, and fairly attractive. But, since I have a fear of spiders, I did not want the busy wallpaper that could hide bugs and other creepy-crawlies.  As you can probably see, the wallpaper kind of looks like camouflage.

I was happy to discover that the wallpaper came off very easily.

In these photos, you can also see what a disaster area our foyer was. I had piled everything into the foyer while we were working on the living room area.

In this next photo, you can see how it looked after I pulled all of the wallpaper down. You can see there were moldy patches on the ceiling where there had been a leak years before we bought the home.  It had long since been dry, but there were still stains.

Are you can see in the "after photos," everything looks so clean and white! And, if a spider comes running across the floor, you'll be sure to see it. 

I decided to put up all of the art on the wall that I had there before.  I may not leave it this way, but this is going to be "it" for now.  I can always change things in the future if I find different piece of art that I like even better than some of the ones in this collection.   

The picture of a flamenco dancer was a gift from my parents. The dancer reminds them of me.  The ink is circle art, done by me, and the picture of a beagle was done by my grandmother.  The large head on the table was a gift from my father, and the table itself was a purchase from a flea market.  All of the other items were thrift store finds.

  

The large, gold mirror was a gift from my mother.  I think it works great in this space.  We use the gold chest of drawers as a tool chest.  That may change in the future, but in the meantime, we actually still need places to store our tools for all of the renovations that we're still doing.  The palm tree lamps were each about $8. I found them at Goodwill. I was very happy to find them, because I love palm trees and the gold color.

Here is a view of the front door.  The lamp hanging from the ceiling is original to when we bought the house. I may change it in the future, but, for now, we left it as is. I wanted to replace it a beautiful chandelier, but now I'm thinking I'm going to go with a ceiling fan, since we have such problems with heat and humidity here, in this house.

This gorgeous, gold ship is a recent find from Goodwill; it was only around $5. I could not resist getting it, even though I already have way too much art for this small foyer space.

I say "small" space, but the foyer is like a whole, other living room for us, now.  I put three chairs in here, so I can visit with my parents.  It is fun just to sit in a different room for a change. It's so wonderful how it feels like such a nice, clean, safe space, now that we have painted everything white.

I'm so happy about how this little corner turned out!  It's like a whole, little seating area, underneath the staircase.  It really shows that if you think of just what to do, there are a lot of things you can do with what seems to be a tiny, insignificant space.

You can probably see a little bit of the Brown staircase in the bottom right hand corner of this photo.  That is the same paint that was there when we bought the house. We're going to paint the staircase different colors, and at a different time.

You can see here that the wallpaper is still on the wall leading up to the second floor.  We're going to paint that wall a different color, which is why we left it for now.