Room Reveals

Entryway Transformation

This entryway transformation takes an off-white and wooden space and completely updates it with paint, new tile floors, and even a bold orange door!

entryway transformation

I may have mentioned that we were finally able to move into the basement at the rental renovation a couple of weeks ago.  While I know that people are waiting patiently for photos of our spaces down there, I realized that I hadn’t finished sharing photos of the upstairs changes!  Today I’m showing off our entryway transformation, aka how a dingy, off-white and wood space was completely updated with paint :)

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I was originally going to share the entryway and living room photos together since both spaces are open to one another.  But then I realized that I hadn’t even really showed any of the progress… so you’ll have to wait until next week for the living room part.

entryway before

You can see a proper before tour of the entire upstairs at our rental renovation here (with a video!).  Basically, all the walls were painted an off-white, light yellow, beige type of colour, half of the wood was stained (some was painted white), and the floors needed a lot of attention.

Entryway Changes: Covering the Wood

One of the first things we did was adding tiles to the entry, because we’d be using this space a lot and didn’t want to damage the sub-floors more.  The Husband also ripped our all the old carpet tacks that surrounded the living room, and we had to take out the baseboards since they were about an inch or so too high.

painting wood doors white

My plan was to streamline all the wood-tones in the house, and really make the hardwood floors the feature.  I painted the wood trim, which included the closet doors (man do I hate those slats!).  You could really tell how dingy that door was looking next to the white trim though!

Oh, and the super long light that was hanging/attached on the wall?  We replaced it with a (similar) simple LED flushmount too.

white paint vs stain

For some reason, the wood on the closet doors (and in the window in the dining room) wasn’t sealed the same as the rest (like the bead-board in the hallway).  I was getting a lot of stain bleed-through, and I knew from experience that I needed to use a solvent-based paint or primer to make it white.

Entryway Door Update

The door at our main house has a similar half-lite window, however it has a frosted pattern so that people can’t look inside.

frosted entry door window

I always thought that it was weird that this door was clear glass, so added some frosted privacy film to the bottom portion.  That way, we still get a lot of light that passes through, and can still easily see who’s visiting us at the door from the top window.

I also added frosted privacy film to the window in the bathroom shower, because um, why would that be regular glass!?  It was leftover from when I updated our basement bathroom door.

painting orange door

If you saw my whole house colour scheme, than you know that orange is one of our accent colours.  I had leftover paint from the bathroom at our main house, and it actually worked well on the door!

grey tiles against orange door

The pop of colour on the inside of the door is a really fun addition to the space!  It goes well with the bright white trim and closet door, the gray tiles on the floor, and the blue grey colour on the adjoining walls.

painting wall edges

My passive-aggressive reminder to the Husband to take his shoes off when he got in the house…

You’ll see next week that our living and dining room is actually a super dark colour.  But I kept the entryway area (including the wall directly across, in front of the kitchen) painted in the lighter blue/gray slate colour.

Entryway Transformation

Ready to see how the space turned out?

blue gray walls with orange door

I just finished the grouting of the tiles recently.  We were originally thinking of refinishing the hardwood floors, so I didn’t want the stain to seep into the grout.  We decided to just Rejuvenate them instead (since the house will be rented and might need some more refreshing after).

grey tiles next to wood floors

There were a couple of stained areas (you can see one in the photo above!), and while I did try cleaning it with a bunch of different stuff, I’m thinking it’s seeped in there good.

tile to hardwood grout transition

The Husband also wanted to add a transition piece in between the tile and hardwoods (we even bought one that ended up being too high).  But I was really hoping to just do a simple grout line in between, since both floors were the same height.

grout in between tile and hardwood floors

Actually, there was one tile that was cut a tiny bit too long, but once I started cleaning the floors to finish the grout, I noticed that it was loose and I was able to pull it up.  I still had to clean out all the mortar, cut a new tile and wait for it to set… but at least I have that nice crisp grout line now!

white baseboards with stained shoe mould

Because we were waiting to grout, we also couldn’t finish installing the baseboards until that was done.  Thankfully the littles were visiting the grandparents one weekend and it was a mad dash to finish all the projects that had been waiting almost a year.

Room Sources:

updated entryway

We have a cheap rug that we’ve put in the area now to soak up wet feet, so hopefully it will work well to keep the entryway looking fresh!  If you’re wondering what the tape on the light switch is for, that switch is the one that controls the outlet where I plugged in my computer, so I didn’t want people to accidentally turn it off!

grey blue walls with hardwood floors

Here’s the outlet that I was talking about!  This is the wall directly facing the entry, and as I mentioned, it was also painted the slate colour.  There’s a small sneak peek into the living/dining room, so come back next week to see that transformation/reveal too!

entryway transformation with orange door

I’ve wanted the rental renovation to be a more neutral home compared to the bright colours at our main house, but I couldn’t help adding some bold colours :)  Besides, the orange door is only the really crazy one, right!?

Actually, the rest of the entryway is really similar to how I painted the hallway, which is just around the corner.  Eventually we’ll be tiling that space with the same long gray tiles, so they’ll really be matching!

entryway transformation

Compared to the dingy off-white space before, do you prefer the painted entryway transformation?  I mean, the floor is definitely a lot better – but I also think that painting everything really refreshed the space.

Oh, and we kept the inside of the closet untouched (other than the new floors).  Just picture wooden walls (like a darker/browner wood than the doors used to be) with a hanger and a shelf above.

Don’t forget to come back next week to see the rest of the living room… then I’ll finally be able to move downstairs and show off those spaces!

(The kitchen remains the only room we didn’t touch from the original tour, other than a good cleaning.  Our plan is to eventually redo it, but it won’t be until we’re done renting the upstairs).

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