Our Entryway

Blogging/writing is like a muscle, if you don't exercise it it gets out of shape.  Please excuse me if this post is 'flabby'.  It has been awhile.
We have slowly been changing things around here.  The rate of change is picking up now that I am no longer pregnant and angel baby has been sleeping through the night more often than not (although, now that I write that he won't do it anymore).  One thing we have done was to create a sort of entry way into our home.  Before, you would enter through this door and be in the garage and then have to go through another door to actually get into the house.

Needless to say, it is impossible to keep a garage clean and that was the first thing people saw when they came to our house. We had spent all this time updating the inside of the house but you still had to walk through a disaster to get to it. I don't have any before pictures but just picture your typical garage with an added layer of dust. 

 Now it looks like this when you enter through the door. 

We are still not sure what we are going to do with the garage itself.  It is not as structurally sound as we would like and the roof leaks so we did not want to add a permanent room in case we decide to change the garage structure.  This 'room' was our solution.  It is really just an L shaped partition. 

 I really like the industrial modern look that is popular right now.  The first thing we did was to erect a 4x4 post in each corner(3 posts total).  They have metal plates that you screw into the concrete first and then screw the 4x4 into that plate.  Just like at the bottom of the pillars you see on some porches. 
Next, we built wood frame out of 2x4s on the ground and then tipped them up and screwed each side into the pillars.  They sell corrugated metal in 2' by 8' sheets so it was just a matter of screwing each sheet into the back of our wood frame to enclose the room.

 I am really pleased with the way it turned out.  We still need to replace the door.  It doesn't even close properly anymore and there is a lot of day light coming through those cracks. But in the interim, I painted it black to hide some of the imperfections.

Right behind the black door when you enter is my washer and dryer.  I needed a way to hide those because they are mismatched and let's face it, your laundry is not one of this first things you want people to see when they come over.  We chose to hide it using piping and white curtains.

The pipe is attached to each wall with a flange and then there is a pipe that is attached to the floor to create the corner.  (I apologize for the explanations in this post.  It is confusing me and I did it!  Out.of.practice. So sorry.)

 

The table is old(I bought it off Craigslist and painted it white).  The chairs are new.  I found them at Target for $25/piece which I thought wasn't too terrible.  I realize I kind of hoard chairs.  I have probably 8 chairs in my garage right now that I am not using.  But 6 of them go with a table that I am not currently using but want to eventually use.  And then I have a couple old vintage-y stools that I can't part with.  And then these 2 red chairs came along and they match some other chairs that I own and 6 matching chairs is better that 4 when you have a large family.... You see, totally justifiable.  Anyway, side rant over, the lamp we found shortly after we married at the grocery store of all places. 

I strung white lights along one edge.  I like how the light reflects off the metal.

Justin built the white locker/shelf thing a few houses ago.  I still love it.  As you can see in the above picture, the garage has many faults.  Huge cracks being one of them.  We are trying to decide how to make the whole structure a little more weather proof and structurally sound.  We are kind of kicking around the idea of covering the whole exterior of the garage with metal and then adding wood awning and goose neck lights for a modern farmhouse look(yes, that is really a thing:modern farmhouse).
Until then, I am just so happy that we have an entry room that does not scream 'these people are weird'.  I like people to figure that out after they have talked with us for a while.;)

Thanks for sticking it out 'til the end.  If you have any questions just let me know.  Hopefully, I will start to write on this blog more frequently so stayed tuned.