Enter at your own risk

Did you ever walk into a house and think, how welcoming, how inviting, how indicative of how the rest of the house must be because it's so fabulous . . . .

Well, you wouldn't think that about my house a couple months ago.  We enter the house through our front door (no mud room) and with 3 kids, coats, backpacks, sports equipment, etc., it often looked like you were walking into the Goodwill.  We are not the tidiest of folks, but I REALLY like my foyer to look lovely - smoke and mirrors baby!

So, a while back I decided to add a variety of decorative coat hooks to an open wall in the foyer.  Here's how it looked after I applied the hooks:

Super cute, right?  Each of the hooks was picked with care to represent the new owner of said hook or something important to us.  It was a great idea (I say so myself), however in practice, here's how it actually looked each day.

And the view from the front door was this:

As you can see, my masterpiece of the hook collection was covered by books and bags and CRAP constantly.  So, I decided a revamp was in order.  I developed a new solution for the bags and coats and what-nots (we have buttloads of whatnots) to be tucked in the main hallway of my 1960's ranch, just off the foyer.  

First, I stained some boards I had cut at Home Depot.  I bougth a 8ft piece of lumber, and had HD cut it in half.  Then I came home and stained a dark cherry/walnut color: 

I wanted them to look a bit rustic, so wasn't very precise.  I then sanded boards down a bit with steel wool and applied the hooks.  This was actually pretty easy as the screws bit into the wood nicely, vs. the foyer where I had to use anchors for all of the hooks (fixing all those nail holes was awesome). 

Here's how they look up in the hallway, ahhhh, much better!

Now they are out of view, but still very accessible! 

Here's how it looks with just our "summer" stuff, of course in the winter it's filled to the gills but there is plenty of room for each person to have 2 hooks! 

This pic gives you some perspective on how it looks from the foyer, out of sight but still neat.

Now for a pic of how the foyer looks AFTER:

Better, right?  Here's a pic of the door that leads to the hallway with the new hook rack, just off to the left:

Love the bright aqua sideboard and mirror wall - great upcycled pieces anyone can do!

And here's a better pic of the wall of holes that I filled to add a nice little entry spot.

So more coming this week on some nasty old floor lamps I purchased at a thrift store, see BEFORE:

TAGS: foyer, entry way, bench, coat hook, coat rack, messy entry way, messy foyer