Mini Project: Entryway

We're still saving up some money and gathering up some willpower to do large projects, like the baseboards. Those baseboard-less walls, they stare at me every day and laugh at my incompetence. One of these days, we'll cover them and shut them up for good.

For now, it feels good to just relax and take things one at a time. It feels good to be able to sit down and watch some TV after work and not have to rush to do some DIY work before it gets too late to make some DIY noise.

So we have been focusing on things we can do easily, cheaply and quickly.

When we moved in, one of the things that bothered me was this tight entryway.

That was the door to the apartment behind me. As you can see, you are faced with the wall once you open the door, and you have to walk slightly to the left to enter the living area.

As you can also see, the walls were all different colors in the living room, entryway and kitchen. Crazy for such a small apartment. Good thing we also killed all the other colors when we killed the orange.

Here's another view of the spot, as seen from the kitchen. We removed the mirror when we painted and were left with this blank canvas. That's the door to the bathroom, by the way.

I hated having that awkward wall greeting me every time I came home, so doing something about that corner ranked pretty high on my to-do list.

I decided that a tiny table would be awesome in that corner. And the table had to have rounded edges so people wouldn't bump into it. I took the measurements and had a very specific idea of the kind of table I wanted. After going through table after table that were either too big or too expensive, I found this on Craigslist:

Originally $39.99 from The Canadian Superstore and sold, with a chair, for $20 on Craigslist.

Here she was in that ugly corner, looking all lonely and desolate. She looked like she needed some friends.

Because we seemed to keep losing our keys, we installed this magnetic-message-board/key-hooks nearby. I got it at Nood's big annual sale for $17.50 (down from $59.90).

I also added a little bowl for sunglasses. It's summer and I hate squinting.

The same night, I found out that Ikea was having a summer sale and they had the perfect mirror for the spot. Down to $19.99 from $39.99. Voila, our awkward corner was now functional.

A little accessorizing, and this was what we ended up with: a prettier sight to come home to.

 Let's hope it helps us gather enough willpower to do the baseboards after a long day at work.