Welcome friends! Today marks the beginning of a fun new home tour series I am part of called the Room By Room Summer Showcase. It is hosted by Amy at My Life From Home and it’ll be a link up of bloggers’ home tours, featuring rooms as they are now and including plans for future decor and renovations.
We are kicking off the series in the foyer and since our foyer is the size of a postage stamp, I figured it was a chance to talk about how I’m making the most of a tiny front entry.
So I guess we can start with the view from the front door – the one you get when you first open the storm door and walk into our ‘foyer’. I put that in quotes because our foyer is nothing more than a 20 square foot square that immediately leads to a half-staircase to a landing. It is SUPER TINY. 
Things I like about it? I really like the farmhouse, rustic vibe of the stairs and the stair treads. This is actually continued on our main staircase to the second floor. It’s definitely a unique feature and many people comment on it. What I wish I had? About 20 square feet more so that I could actually have a bench or chair or something because opening a door, pulling in a stroller, car seat, jumpy giant dog and groceries is often like a comedy of errors. We also added that shiplap wainscoting at the top of the stairs one afternoon to keep the beachy-easy-breezy vibe going. It wraps around the enclosure for the powder room (which, incidentally, is currently under renovation.)
A while back, I pulled off the old louvred bi-fold doors that were on the closet (seen to the left in the top photo) and turned them into our back yard shutters. Then I wallpapered the closet area to give it a bit of style and pop.
It’s too small for any real furniture, but the Ikea shoe cabinet fits pretty well. I’m going to switch out the knobs soon – so watch my InstaStories for that! We use heavy duty coat hooks (hung into studs) and our boots go to the right of the shoe cabinet. (Because even though they have lots of snow in Sweden, the Ikea shoe cabinet design does not accommodate snow boots!!)
The bowl and cups on top of the cabinet are for our mail key and a few other front door essentials. All of Buddy’s doggy stuff is in the top drawer of the shoe cabinet. 
If we stand at the top of the half stairway and look downwards, you can see that I haven’t really done a darn thing to this space in more than a year. What has been working well for us is the set of hooks behind the door. Since it’s over the baseboard heater, it’s a great place to hang wet scarves and mitts after being in the cold, or to hang our rain gear after a shore walk with the dog. 
The ‘railing’ is a built-in shelf unit. I think it was built by the previous owner, because none of our neighbours seem to have anything like it. It used to be completely open on both sides (and knotty pine), so we closed part of it in to create compartments and then painted it out. I find it challenging to find something to add into the living room side of the shelf. It’s long and narrow and tends to either collect dust or junk – like literally junk mail. So I do my best to clean it out and keep it completely empty for the most part. Any ideas on what to do there? Or should I maybe just close it up completely? #EmptyForNow
The wire baskets on the stairway side now store our seasonal essentials – LB has her own basket with her stroller blanket, brimmed caps and sunscreen. It works well and doesn’t require any effort to keep it tidy.
One thing I am hoping to change in the near-ish future is the flooring in the foyer/doorway area. I’d really like to lighten it up and change the tile to something with a bit more of my grey-white-blue tones that I’m so drawn to. Once we make progress on the bathroom, I might use the same flooring in the foyer. Ideally, I’d have it finished before winter because, you know, salt. SO. MUCH. Salt. 
Since this is a hop (I’m in so many hops these days!!) have a look at all these other front entries for Week One of this Room By Room Summer Showcase 🙂 Thanks again to Amy for hosting! (I’m actually going to skip the next couple of weeks because we are starting a living room makeover and I don’t know if I can handle photographing all these rooms!… but I’ll hop back in for Week Four which will be the Guest Room)
