Front Entryway Makeover

My Grandma Shirl was my favorite person ever. Hands-down. To know her was to love her. Seriously! I’m so grateful that for the four years I was in college I got to live with her instead of in the crappy dorms. It was great! She died not long after Anderson and I got married (we were so glad she got to be there on that special day!), and I miss her tons. She was the best storyteller. Part of the fun was never knowing if her stories were true or not! My favorites were the ones about her childhood. She was adopted into a wealthy family as a young girl, and I was completely fascinated by stories about her life. One of my favorites was about her elaborate 16th birthday party that was covered by the local paper, so she gave me a picture of her at that party a long time ago. And I’ve always cherished it.

Recently, I decided to update the front entryway in our house. And I got the crazy idea to blow up that picture of my 16-year-old Grandma and make that the focal point! Okay, first I had to ask Anderson what he thought about a giant picture of Grandma being in the foyer, and as usual, he didn’t care. He’s a smart man. 🙂 I think he’s learned that my ideas usually sound weird (like this one, this one, and this one), but he likes them once they’re complete! Usually. Once he was on board I ordered a 3’x4′ engineering print of the image from Staples. It was so easy to do. I just upload the image to the website and picked it up when it was ready. I took a picture of the old 8×10 print, so the quality isn’t stellar, but that just gives it more character.

I wanted to change the look of the wall where the picture was going to hang, but I’m on a wall-painting hiatus. I really would rather do anything than paint a wall right now, so instead I bought gold polka dot wall decals and put them all over the wall. I just eyed the placement and put Post-it notes where I wanted the dots to go. Then we went to Lowe’s and bought a piece of wood to mount the picture on. I had it cut to 3’x4′ then trimmed the image, so there’s a border all the way around. And I painted the wood with leftover bright green paint from Kingston’s room.

But once the board was nailed into the wall and it was time to attach the image I had another idea. Instead of permanently attaching the picture to the board I wanted to make it temporary, so I can change it out when the mood hits. I like to change things up a lot, and since the engineering print was only $7.80 it won’t be pricey to print a new one every now and then! So I used foam tape squares to attach the picture to the board. And that was that! This wall faces the one with the deer head, so the area flows together now with the golds, pink, and greens. I keep pulling different pieces of furniture in though. I can’t decide what should be there. I’ll just keep rearranging until it feels right!

I know Grandma Shirl would laugh so hard if she could see it, and that makes me smile every time I walk by!

Engineering Print – Staples, Wood – Lowe’s, Gold Dot Wall Decals – Land of Nod (On sale this week!)
Bentwood Chair – My Parents gave us a set, and I painted them, Pillow – IKEA, Wire Basket – Thrifted (I think it’s for tennis balls?)
Vintage Swim Cap & Afghan – Thrifted