Welcome to the apartment entryway! There’s been quite a bit of radio silence on the blog between this spring and early summer but this entryway project felt like it really got the creative juices flowing again and I’m so excited to get back to sharing regular content with you all. Starting with this little space. It’s the first in the apartment to be “done” and even though it’s not a large area, I do think the changes made a big impact. Keep scrolling to see the ‘before’ and full ‘after’!
SHOP THE STORY:
The entryway leads into the living area and so I wanted it to feel a part of that space (and the things I have planned for it), while still feeling like it served distinctly as an entry space. This meant I wanted a last minute place to check my lipstick and somewhere we could hang our keys and jackets on the way in and out.
The first thing to go was the ‘rental white’ paint color. I can’t stand it and so my Mom (an absolute master painter) generously lent her skills to repainting the living room and entryway in Benjamin Moore’s ‘Shoreline’. The facing wall I painted this deep navy teal (I had literally been dreaming of painting a wall this color for years) and love how it turned out as a nice rich accent.
The mirror in the entry is actually a window from the barn at my grandparent’s old house (where my Dad grew up). My parent’s salvaged a few of them before my grandparents moved and my Mom had mercury glass mirror put behind it. I love that it feels like a little piece of my Pennsylvania home here in New York. Above it hangs a sign saying ‘Entreé‘ which means entrance in French and was a sweet housewarming gift from a dear friend.
Another thing we replaced were the light fixture (reference the ‘before again… eek) and the door pull on the coat closet. Small changes that make a really big difference. I added matching knobs to the wall as makeshift hooks beneath the mirror.
The bar cart is filled with lots of personal touches that I love – the photo hanging above it is from a perfect night spent wandering the canals in Amsterdam while the Buffalo Bill image framed below is actually a playing card from a deck picked up on our trip to Wyoming. It’s the Ace of Hearts which we decided was a good omen – to leave the house with luck and enter with love. The illustration framed in the lower part of the bar cart is a map of the Cotswolds from the cutest country Inn we stayed at there last Fall. And the bar cart itself is a $15 flea market find from when we lived in Los Angeles (it’s a vintage typewriter cart).
I wanted the downstairs living area space of the apartment to feel like New York in the Fall (crisp, rich colors and textures yet an overall warm and inviting feeling) and I think that the entryway is a good start to that. More to come!
