Farmhouse Style Makeover Plans For My Suburban Foyer

Wouldn’t you think that if you were remodeling and redecorating every single room in your house, that you’d start with the room that every single person sees when they first enter your home?  Yeah, I would – but, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit of a rebel.   😀   My foyer has actually taken a seventh row seat behind the total makeovers of my kitchen, breakfast area, laundry room, family room, dining room and office.  Click HERE if you’d like to take a look at the final reveals of the other rooms that we’ve completed.

There’s a reason that I made the decision not to do the foyer first though.  Until I actually had the other rooms decorated, I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of look I wanted to wind up with in the foyer.  Now that those other rooms are pretty much complete, I’m ready to get started in here!

The best way to show you what our foyer currently looks like is with an overhead shot, because my foyer is oddly shaped and hard to photograph.  Obviously, this is looking straight down from the top of our stairs.

What you can’t see in that shot, is what’s under the landing at the top of the steps.  Our foyer is actually L shaped.  When you enter through our front door, the stairs are to the right, but straight ahead, the foyer narrows into a little alcove before opening into the family room.  Yes – those are my two “helpers’ that follow me everywhere.

We are fortunate to have a coat closet in the foyer, but the problem is – it’s filled with our own coats!  Not much room is left for adding more when we have company.  One of the first projects that we’ll tackle is to add some sort of a board and batten treatment on the wall that’s to the left of the front door – the one with the opening into the office.  I also want to add trim above the opening (and the rest of the doors in here) to make it feel taller.  As you can see, I have a bit of an issue to figure out where the ceiling below the stairs drops down to it’s normal 9′ height.  

Adding a few hooks on this wall will give our guests and easy place to hang coats and pocketbooks.  I’m planning to do this on both sides of the office opening.  

Well…surprise!  The board and batten was installed yesterday!  The entire wall will be caulked and painted white before too long and then I’ll add the hooks.  I’ll go into more detail above the sizes and types of trim that we used in a later post.

Another area that we took care of yesterday, is the two story wall where the front door and a window at the bottom of our steps is located.  We added trim to the top of those as well.

And the doors in that little alcove that I mentioned?  They received the trim treatment too.   😀

Here’s what’s left to do:

• Caulk and paint the board and batten wall white, to match the trim.
• Replace the chandelier, replace the can light in front of the coat closet with a flush mount fixture and add a matching flush mount in the hallway at the top of the stairs.
• Replace the area rug.  The current one just isn’t working well with two dogs.
• Add hooks to the board and batten wall to the left of the office opening.
• What am I going to do on the board and batten wall to the right of the office opening???
• Build (maybe) two benches – one for each side of the office opening.
• Do something on the big honkin’ wall going up the steps.  Gallery wall???
• Made a decision about whether or not to add sconces to either side of the mirror above the gray chest.
• Add an outlet inside of the coat closet.  That’s where our modem and router are located.  See that extension cord running around the wall beside the gray chest?
• Add some sort of drapery or shade to the window at the bottom of the steps.
• Add accessories!

I look forward to you following along with our foyer makeover journey!  Have any suggestions?  Leave them in the comments!