Dining Room Entryway Transformation

Oh friends. I am so excited to finally launch the series of before & afters of our home tour! We moved in just over a year ago now and I feel like we've finally made enough solid changes I have something to share!

The house is anything but done so this series will trickle out over time, but today I can share Two Whole Spaces!! Woot!!

First, the Before Pictures:

This is our dining room at move-in. The entire house was that builder beige color. At least here in the dining room and entry way it had that white trim to break it up.

But this brassy chandelier. Oh help me. It had to go.

Our entry way also had an icky brass light fixture that you can see at the top edge of the photo below.

And that awful black box thing on the wall? The exposed doorbell.

That nice beautiful wall and the builder decides to put the doorbell box and alarm system beeper thing right smack dab in the middle of it?! Ugh.

I so wish they had moved it over above that closet door instead. But to add insult to injury, something happened to the cover of that box so we had nice wires hanging out of our wall.

The Transformation Photos:

First order of business was painting.

Handyman Tim set to work with Hawthorne Yellow by Benjamin Moore for the dining room:

But even then we weren't totally sure how to use this space. We were used to eating in our kitchen and the dining room is quite removed from the kitchen space. We thought maybe we'd put the girls playroom in this area but quickly learned two important things:

1. When we have guests over and want to add the leaf into our table to extend the seating, the kitchen isn't large enough to handle the bigger table.

2. The girls don't keep the play space neat at all times and I hated this cluttery mess being the first thing someone saw when they came into our house.

So we sucked it up and decided the extra trek from the kitchen was worth having an official dining room.

The After Photos:

We placed our dining table and mish mash of chairs here. We finally swapped the brass chandelier with a beautiful brushed bronze lantern.

I added an amazing wall gallery for our travel photos and a US map. (Check out more about these amazing frames here.)

This room will also serve as Homework Central for the girls. They have a small bookshelf of books hidden around that corner and our chalkboard easel.

Our whole house is very family-focused right now and I'm ok with that. We're just trying to make sure that the toys and books and stuff of kids finds a home to be put away or incorporated into the spaces.

We then painted the entryway Cumulous Cloud, a nice grey from Benjamin Moore.

We swapped the brass light fixture with another bronze lantern.

We replaced the doorbell box so at least we don't have the exposed wires. But my hope is to eventually move the boxes into the corner and fix the drywall. But that's on the looooong term list of to-do's if we're in this house long enough.

I also hung my favorite wall gallery from above our fireplace at the last house right here in the entry way. It is my happy place.

I love swapping the prints in there seasonally and I love that it is one of the first things we see when we come home.

As you'll see in future posts, the majority of our home has been painted in 3 shades of grey related to the entryway. The core of the house is grey so I loved choosing bright happy pops of color for a few other rooms. The dining room  yellow is a bit bold, but I love how sunny and warm and welcoming it feels when you walk into the house.

So one last comparison, the before pictures on top and the after pictures below:

Don't you love what a little paint and personal items will do??