If you haven't been following along, you can click here to read part 1 - Goodbye Beautiful Credenza, Hello Bench! and part 2 - What to Do With Our Coats? And Can We Turn On a Light?.
If you have been following along on this project, you know that I've gotten all the pieces and just had to put them together.
Just to recap, this "makeover" had nothing to do with me not liking how it looked before. I LOVED how it was before, and I had tons of storage, BUT, it was completely non-functional for what we needed.
We are 4 people living in a small (by today's standards, but perfect by our non-mcmansion standards) 1950s ranch, with no "real entryway". We have a TINY closet that is already jam-packed with shoes and coats (sooooo many coats.....), so coming in with cold-weather gear (which is a LOT of the year in Michigan) is always a disaster. Imagine walking into a landfill of just coats, shoes, boots, tote bags, and purses....now imagine 4 of us walking into that every day, several times a day. Lots of grumbling and sometimes tripping and falling. Well, 2 of us (me and Nick) did the grumbling. The other 2 just took everything off and dropped anything they were carrying and ran out of the room. It was like a hit-and-run or a drive-by.
So, here's the "before" (in case you forgot from the first post):
LOTS of storage here....but nowhere to sit and take off shoes, nowhere to put coats/shoes/bags, and took up lots of room.
And, here is the first set of "after" pictures, which I call, "fake-reality", and means, "what my entryway only looks like for blog pictures, and not necessarily ever again in real life":
Okay, sooooo, this is SUPER DUPER functional now! You already know how all these pieces came to be here (if you read the first 2 posts), but let me just tell you again why this is way better than the before. The bench gives us a place to sit and take shoes on and off and to set things (let's be real, there's a LOT of just setting things here). The coat rack gives a spot to hang coats and bags (yay! no more landfill!). The tables give us a place to set the lamp and mail. And shoes can go under the bench. AND, boots are in boot trays across from the bench and behind the couch (not in the pics, because who wants to see that), and they will be going into storage VERY soon because spring is just around the corner. HALLELUJIAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now here are some more pictures and close-ups. Now pose! and turn, and walk, and turn, and "fierce" face! and turn, and walk away!
This pillow is my new favorite. I have been drooling over this in the Anthropologie catalog and then I saw it in person at the store and then I fell in love. Like, hard. So, I had some gift card money leftover and I had to return the towel bar from the basement bathroom makeover (I'll get into that story when I do a final reveal on that), so I had some store credit as well. Sooooo, I decided to splurge and get this for myself with some of the credenza money. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE it.
And here's a close-up of the lamp and mail tables, in a world where my only mail is an Anthropologie catalog (and I just lounge around flipping thru it and eating bon-bons - VERY realistic).
And here's a close-up of the coat rack side where the only thing on it is a purse and a cute little flower coat that take up very little visual space and happen to match perfectly with everything else in this space (more reality).
Now, here is the second set of "after" pictures, which I call, "real-life":
OKAY....so this is actually still not real-life. It's just a SUPER DUPER cleaned up version of it. But, this is how the shoes work.
Each kid gets a pull out bin for their shoes and a shoe tray for the hubby's shoes. We had the bins and trays before, but they were still all over the place. Now they're neatly tucked.
THIS is the real-life picture. And then see below for a REAL real-life post-photoshoot story. I'll narrate it for you.
Meena throws her coat on the floor. I say, "Please hang up your coat on the rack". Meena looks at it.
Meena hopes I will go away and not notice that she has not hung up the coat. She decides to wait it out and just stare at the coat. I do not go away and I repeat the request.
Meena realizes I can outwait her and decides to hang up her coat. The end.
So, overall, here's the cost breakdown for everything in this makeover if you're interested:
Bench: $200
Tables: $30
Coat Rack: $35
Pillow (after store credit and gift card): $44 (don't judge me)
Shoe bins, shoe tray, lamp, sheepskins: Already had these, so no cost
Total: $309, which came out of the money from selling the credenza, so the real total is...Nothing!
And, I happily have a bunch of moola leftover from selling the credenza, so the rest of that is going towards paying the Catholic school tuition bill, yippee for that! So, I would say that this makeover was a good thing all around!
Now, I need to finish that basement bathroom......
Until next time!