When we woke up last Monday, we had no intentions to start ripping apart our entry way, but here we are. Like several of the rooms in our house, our entryway is packed with character and original features that we’re keeping, but the room just needs a little bit of love to fit our style. However, this room has been low on the to do list, mostly because we never use it! Hell, for the first two years of living here, our front door handle didn’t even function properly, so the door was always locked from the outside.

Since moving in, we’ve only done a couple of things in here, which included painting the ceiling white, change out the switches, installing a little bit of baseboard trim; all of which we’re planning to redo. Before we get started on how we’re updating this area, let’s take a little bit of a tour and introduce you to “the wall of terror.”

We should add that this is kind of a tight space, which made it really difficult to get decent photos of. We ended up using our iPhone to take pictures as we didn’t have a wide enough camera lens to capture pictures of the space.

Oh, and yes, the wall in the photo above? She’s covered in pebbles. Thousands and thousands of pebbles. From what we’ve been told, the previous owner plastered the wall and took bags of pebbles and just threw them at the wall so they would stick. You can run your hand across it and little rocks will just start falling off, hitting the baseboard heater below. Yet, it’s almost like it’s a Chia Pet and the rocks keep growing back; there’s never a spot that seems bare. The previous owner’s granddaughter called it “the wall of terror” because of the numerous times she bashed her head into it as a child. Fortunately for anyone who visits, the pebble wall will soon be no more. More on our plans for this wall below!

The floors? We’re totally keepin’ those. Our house is filled with charm and history, and the brick flooring in our entryway is a prime example of that. These bricks actually come from a historic brewery in our town, which was demolished in the early 80’s. To our understanding, the back of our property bumped up against the back of the brewery. We love these. And look at the star someone carved into one of the bricks? So cool.

Alright, back on track. Here’s a list of what we’re planning to do to the foyer:

• Demo out the pebble wall (oh what fun), and replace with drywall.
• Remove the baseboard heater and have the pipe cut off behind the drywall/baseboard (this room doesn’t really need it’s own heater and there’s one just around the corner in the living room. We’re excited to (hopefully) get rid of the clunky old thing.)
• Reconfigure the electrical boxes and wiring, and install two new sconces.
• Install new baseboard and door trim.
• Paint the ceiling, walls, back of the front door, closet, closet doors, and closet door hardware.
• Swap out the light switches (more on that below).
• Install wallpaper on the former pebble wall.
• Bring in a foyer table, mirror, accessories, and of course lots of house plants to bring this room all together.

And before we go, here’s some inspiration photos of what we’ve ordered and [kind of] made decisions on. Enjoy our kinda shitty mood board that we threw together in 45 seconds.

1. We ordered this wallpaper from Rifle Paper Co. The print we went with is Juniper Forest in Black. It was a bit expensive, but fortunately, one roll is plenty to cover the former pebble wall.

2. While the wallpaper was pretty easy for us to narrow down, it took some time to find the right wall sconces. We hardly ever use this room. A lot of the sconces we looked at and liked were anywhere from $200-$300 each. EACH! No way. We couldn’t justify spending that much on lights that won’t really get that much attention. The fixtures we decided on were $33 each from Home Depot. We’re thinking we’ll swap out the clear glass globes for something that looks more like milk glass.

3. This is perhaps the thing that I, Alan, am most excited about. I’ve wanted to slowly start upgrading the light switches and outlets in our house for a while now to ones that are a lot more ornate. When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle had a light switch like this in their 100+ year old farmhouse, and I loved it. These are the ones we ordered. They’re a bit pricey at $22 each (both switches in here are three-ways), so we decided to start in a room where we only needed two.

4. And finally, this is the mirror we already have for this room. We actually bought it with our Target wedding registry coupon about two and a half years ago, and she’s still sitting in her packaging. We’re not sold that this mirror is the one, so we’re going to keep looking just in case.

We also still need to decide on a foyer table and a few other things, but until then, let the demo begin!

before and after blogger DIY entryway foyer foyer update home renovation Michigan wallpaper