Welcoming Spaces

It's only fitting that my first design (eek!) blog post is about a space I created a while back, and it litterally welcomes people into my home. Our entrance. It was always one of those "trouble" spaces, lots of mess and not a lot of good options to correl it. The piles of shoes were horrible, as were the bits of junk that piled up in corners.

It was anything but welcoming.

I wish I had a good before picture for you, but this will have to suffice.

That dark picture there from way back in 2007 when we moved in... See way off there behind that little half wall? Nothing. that's right, there's NOTHING there... Just a little sunken entry. It was a horrible space.

I must have originally been inspired (by what was then new - pinterest) and thought about re-working some cabinetry for the entry.

I measured the space and found a two upper kitchen cabinets from Re-Store (Habitat for Humanity buildling supply store) that were white shaker style. perfect!

For this project, because of the space we needed uppers ONlY, they're much more shallow and lower cabinets would be too deep for the space.

We flipped them upside down (so the knobs would be on top) gave it a good scrubbing and hubby installed them. He put two pieces of wood on the floor first, so that the doors wouldn't scrape across the floor when opened. He screwed the back of the cabinets into the wall.

I purchased a piece of wood that was the same depth as the cabinets and a piece of upholstery foam. (My favourite deal is to purchase mattress foam from Walmart and double it up. Much cheaper and does the same trick!). I bought a outdoor curtain on sale from Fabricland in a fun geometric pattern and upholstered the fabric and foam to the board. My reason for the outdoor material was I thought that perhaps wet snow-snuits or umbrellas left on the seat would have a better chance of not making my fabric seat moldy if it was water repellant.

Then hubby put it on top of the cabinets and from inside the cabinets screwed the piece of wood in.

VOILA! Finished!

I did paint stripes on the entry way walls to create a bit of space (leftover paint from my master reno) and hung a pretty mirror. Added a few accent pillows, put all the shoes inside and we were done!

Now our entry is not only welcoming it's become a conversation piece!