Home DIY Entryway Makeover- Before and After
This DIY Entryway Makeover in our sunroom is one of my favorite DIY projects we’ve done so far. I mean…wait until you see the before!
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We tackled this DIY entryway makeover several months ago, but didn’t complete it until recently. We use this entrance to the back of our house so often and it needed some serious attention.
Often, the entry way to our home is the first thing people see when they enter our home, and this small space carries a heavy load. It’s where we transition between the outside and the inside. It is the buffer zone where people can remove their shoes, hang up their coats, and store belongings. This space, if used correctly, helps the rest of our home stay more organized and clean!
We have several entryways, but this one is in our sunroom addition and is by far the most utilized! This side door is the entrance to our backyard, to the pool, the sauna, and the hot tub. There are kids and pets and adults going in and out of this door every day, all day. It needed to be both cute, and functional!
The sunroom, which was a later addition to our 1970s home, also doubles as a dining room, homeschool area, and kid’s crafting space. It gets a LOT of use. It is also highly visible from our living room.
First step to our Entryway Makeover…Foundation Repairs
This was a home improvement project that consisted of more than just painting and a few minor fixes. The first step to this DIY home project was to repair some of the structural issues, and install a new door.
The sunroom had a rotten door, dingy paint, and a floor that was slowly sinking down into the crawl space. You could roll a ball from one side of the floor to the other and see it pick up considerable speed.
As I said before, it was a later addition, and some of the work wasn’t done up to code. For one thing, the wood foundation supports were put directly into the dirt. Even I know that’s not ok!
The exterior wall was also super rotten, and was a big project that Daniel tackled last summer, in the middle of also doing some major updates to our backyard.
The entire sunroom foundation was rotten, so Daniel had to add additional supports. This was not a fun job- Daniel spent a lot of time last year doing really awful, unrewarding projects. He spent a lot of time in our dark, old crawlspace, pouring footings and installing concrete blocks.
Install New Door
While he was ripping out and replacing the siding, Daniel installed a new door. We used the door hardware from the old door, as it was new from Home Depot when we moved in.
The old door had a floor to ceiling window, but we chose one with a smaller window (less fingerprints!) We really like that this door has built-in blinds.
He also replaced the door with the hinges on the other side. To be honest this was a mistake initially, but it ended up being perfect- we much prefer having the door swing towards the windows instead of in the flow of traffic!
Paint…Everything
The original wall color in the room was a bright white that had since turned dingy and dirty. The trim was grey. Cool colors, especially cool greys, don’t work well in this lighting. They end up looking too harsh.
For the wall color, I chose Sherwin Williams Soft Chamois, because I loved its warm hue and knew it would work well with neutral colors. The interior wall of the sunroom is brick, which was painted a bright white. I’ve painted brick before during our garage conversion, but didn’t feel like doing it this time.
I put a fresh coat of paint along the three, non-brick walls of the sunroom, and decided to paint the trim the same color. The brick wall is still white- I’ll get to that. Someday!
I agonized about the color of the door, and even tried out a few paint colors. One of my favorite colors is Halycon Green from my bathroom vanity makeover project, so I tried that, but it looked washed out. I finally settled on black, which I should have just gone with from the get-go. Lesson learned- always do interior doors black (in my opinion!)
I’ve used this General Finishes Milk Paint from Amazon for all of my interior doors. I get it in lamp black, and I absolutely love it. It goes on easily and covers well.
Add functional decor
The last step to our entryway makeover was adding in functional decor. This area has heavier traffic than the rest of the house, so we put down a Home Depot industrial outdoor rug under another mat. The tile is old, and somewhat hard to keep clean. It has cracks in places and is missing chunks (you can see a few in these photos!)
Replacing the flooring isn’t a priority now, so I just use lots of rugs to cover where I can.
We have an entryway table that I got on Facebook Marketplace years ago, and we moved it into here to holds extra towels. This is the door everyone uses when coming back from the sauna or pool dripping wet, so we needed towel storage if someone forgets to bring one outside with them.
We also hung up a coat rack (that I painted with the same lamp black milk paint) with several coat hooks. We mostly use these for hanging up wet towels and snow clothes (even though we don’t get snow, our kids just like to wear them when its really cold and pretend, I guess.)
We also needed a place for shoe storage, so I added this shoe rack.
The Entryway After
This entryway gets a lot of use- much more than our front entryway! I’m enjoying the fresh new look, and have more plans for the future (as usual!) Some day I would love to add a new light fixture and a console table with more storage.
It remains one of my favorite DIY projects!
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