Vesti-beautiful

Here are the things that my life outside of work and family revolved around for the past week: wood filler, deglosser, paint, brushes and rollers, cleaner and a good cup of tea every now and then to keep me going.

While we'd painted the walls of our entry hall aka the vestibule a while ago, scraping together enough enthusiasm to tackle yet another room's worth of trim took me some time. Oh, but it was so worth it! For more impact, let's go back to where we started:

[Before: Once upon a time our vestibule was a bedroom ...]

Ah yes, it was awful. Like, really really awful. This is what our entry hall looked like when we first toured the house. In order to create a second bedroom for the downstair's apartment of our house, the previous owner had closed up the original archway to the livingroom and the wall toward the staircase. It was teeny tiny, cramped and pretty filthy.

Within a week from closing we tore into those non-original walls and restored the original floorplan.

The impact that reopening those walls had on this area of the house can hardly be captured in pictures. I marvel at it every time I step into our house. Not only made the floorplan sense now but it felt like the house was drawing you in while at the same time appearing much, MUCH larger than before.

After hours of trimming, patching, priming, sanding, refinishing floors, updating electric yet still miles to go in regard to artwork, window treatments, lighting and other decorative finishing touches, we have arrived at this:

Hard to believe it's the same room, no? Or the same house, for that matter. The old heart pine floors look simply A-mazing against the white trim and soft warm "Woodlawn Colonial Gray" walls and the entire vestibule feels open and airy and bright.

Looooove!