Entry Revealed

The entry is ready for the big reveal.  So if you recall, the original entry looked like the local pre-school did their lesson in primary colors on our walls.  Here was the orignial entry when we bought the house.   That is a big pile of cat-stinking carpeting at the base of the stairs that we immediately pulled out.

CRAZINESS!

As you can imagine, we scrambled to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, to fix the entry so that it would be half-way presentable when people came over.   A family member came to the rescue and gave us new doors for the closet.  The problem was, they didn't exactly fit so Jason had to cut them and re-install hardware to get them to fit right.

There was a lot more to do than just change out the doors.  Jason removed the wall going up the stairs and installed a banister and spindles.  He also installed a marble floor in the entry.  He removed all the paneling and sheetrocked the whole room.  Then, he got on a trim kick and installed shadow-box trim in the whole room and up the stairs too (more on that in a future post).

After ripping out the carpeting, we refinished the stairs, but the bottom stair color didn't match the rest of the stairs.  So NONE of the wood matched - the doors, the stairs, the handrail. 

We didn't know what to do so we just left everything for three years! It wasn't terrible, but I hated the 1970s lacqured doors and all of the mismatched wood:

Finally, I decided I wanted to paint the stairs, railing and closet black.  After Jason stained everything black, I decided I wanted the door black too.  That's what took us a little longer to reveal it all to you.  I will say that this was a bit controversial among my blog readers, friends and family!  I never knew how opinionated everyone was about other people's home improvements!  I was so happy to get everyone's opinions, and, in the end, we decided to move forward with the black.

I hope you like it as much as we do! (insert big drum roll here) . . . .

Now we just have to figure out what we're going to hang on the wall going up the stairs. I was debating on stenciling numbers on the stair risers, but have decided to hold off on that. Thoughts?

I'm linking up with Show n Tell Friday