Meet Our New Foyer (and Our First Project!)

Alrightie! I think we are finally ready to do some house touring here on the blog! Are you ready??

Before I begin this little mini-series of posts introducing you to Shafferland 4.0, allow me to say this. I wanted to wait until we were settled enough that you could see our personalities in this place. There will never fully be an "after" to this home, because we always want to make changes and allow life to unfold in this space. So if you're looking for a completed home, you're about to be disappointed. But if you're looking for the beginning of a story, settle in!

When we first started looking at houses in preparation to move, the main thing we did not want was a fixer upper. If you've been reading here long, you know that Ryan and I are most certainly not afraid of a good house project. In fact, we've worked hard to make each of our homes our very own, and we have great memories of the projects we've done in each of those spaces.

But we knew we would be coming into this new house on the tired side from our last couple of years. We didn't have the stamina for big projects. So we were excited to find a move-in-ready home, brand new with no true need for projects. To be fair, all the paint throughout the house is a soft beige, but even so, we decided to leave everything as it was and just move in and make it our own with our belongings rather than paint colors and projects. 

Except...

...Ryan decided to do one tiny project. ;)

Back when we were at WillowBridge, Ryan had borrowed a table saw from his dad - for a couple of projects he needed to do there. His dad needed the saw back, so Ryan decided to use it one more time before returning it, so we could put some finishing touches on our little foyer. Not long before we left Kokomo, we had put up board and batten in our foyer there, and we both really loved how dramatically it finished that space. Ryan wanted to add it to our foyer here, too. It was a small project, really, requiring only the purchase of the wood. (The builders left a decent amount of trim paint behind, so we used that for this project, which saved us even the cost of buying paint.)

So! Here is a picture of the foyer on the day we closed on the house. (Note: the light fixture is incomplete in this photo. When the builders took it out of the box, the globe was broken, so they had to order a new one. It hadn't arrived by the day we closed.)

I love our foyer, mostly because it simply exists. Our Marion house opened right into the living room, so in rainy and snowy weather, that meant dragging wet coats and shoes into the heart of the living room. Our Kokomo house had a foyer, and I loved it that our guests could have a space to remove wet shoes and coats if needed! I was happy this house also has this space. It's not huge - in fact, it's not as big in real life as I think it looks in the picture above. But it is plenty spacious enough, and I love it. 

Here are some photos from our project days:

Ryan did the installation/mudding/sanding, and then we worked on the painting together. We had it finished up pretty quickly! 

And here is the after version! (Well. Mostly after.)

Let me tell you about this side! The white wall hanging on the left contains verses from Lamentations and was a gift from our real estate agent. 

The wreath was our gift from Gateway when we left there. Our coworker, Sarah, made it, including the actual wreath itself! The darker hanging underneath the wreath was a wedding gift from Ryan's cousin, and we've had that metal monogram since our Marion days!

The table belonged to my Grandma Freelan, and I just love it. It's a perfect fit there! 

Here's the not-quite-completed side! We always get watercolor paintings made of the homes we live in. We have completed paintings of the Marion and Kokomo homes just waiting to be hung here. My friend Amber is going to paint WillowBridge and this house for us, and once we have all four, they'll go up on this opposite side! 

I have more dreams for this space. Maybe a rug someday...maybe a plant by the window. But for now, I'm content with this cozy and hopefully welcoming spot for guests to enter our home. And our prayer is that all who enter here will know they are loved by us and by the Lord! 

(Haven't decided which picture I want to hang on that frame yet.) 

Come back tomorrow for another room tour!