Home Tour: My Entry, Office and Dining Room Reveal!

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I should have posted a reveal of my entry way back when I first “completed” it in 2016. But, honestly, it never felt truly “done” until now. The wood stove happened and the entire room needed to be repainted because of smoke damage and then, because I had it cleared out I went ahead and gave my floors some TLC too. Finally though I was able to take my time and put it all back together again!

This room serves FIVE major functions for me:It is my office, my entryway, my mud room, my dining room AND it also houses my laundry room!

Fortunately it is a very big room and accommodates all of my needs really well.

It is this big entirely because my Mom, during the renovation, had the AMAZING idea to knock down the wall to the wood shed on the other side and incorporate it into my living space.

She helped me put the floor in and my entryway literally doubled in size! But, before the pretty pictures, I had to deal with a truly horrifying situation.


My ex husband insisted on heating our entire home with a wood stove. Unfortunately he did not install it correctly and the incredible amount of smoke damage done to my entire first floor is almost hard to believe. (I am told I am just fortunate that it didn't burn my house down.)

(To say the least I have removed that wood stove and will never burn another fire in this house again!)


I increased the contrast and levels of those photos so you can REALLY see how bad it is and what it looks like in real life. Utterly HORRIFYING.


And this isn’t even the room where the wood stove was!


At first I tried to keep up with keeping things as “clean” as I could but, eventually, I just gave up on that awful, losing battle. So then, I waited until I had the time and the plan to REALLY fix this space entirely from top to bottom!


I LITERALLY wipe my walls and ceiling down by hand but I DID NOT wash them. In fact I did not follow the expensive advice of what to do with a smoke damaged home.


Most advice would have had me WASH my walls with TSP and then move on to using a primer (such as the BIN primer by Zinsor) but, honestly, I just couldn't afford the primer at nearly $100 a gallon! And the idea of "washing" my walls seemed really weird to me...

I literally took off all of my light shades and put them through the dishwasher!

My friend Rachie was helping me when I put the first roll of white on the ceiling and we both literally shrieked! I live here but even I had NO IDEA how truly awful it was without a comparison! That ceiling was white four years ago!

I've had really really really good luck with Ace's brand Royal paint. So I decided to take the risk and just go for it. After wiping my walls and ceilings down I did two heavy coats and, six months later, I had absolutely NO BLEED THROUGH.


I've mentioned it a lot here in the forums and on my own blog. You don't need to follow everyone's advice. This is YOUR home and if you want to take a "risk" like I did and not prime then that's your choice! It worked out for me in this case totally due to how awesome Ace's brand paint is. AND the fact that I was painting semi gloss over matte.


What a difference!

The floor that was here was linoleum over decaying particle board over the old tongue and groove porch floor. (All of this was part of the old screened in porch added in 1925 – 10 years after the home was built.)


I loved the many times painted porch floor but it just wasn’t what I wanted here so I had to get creative! See how I created these lovely inexpensive wood floors.


When the original home was first built this part of it didn’t exist at all. So, where the opening is cut between here and the kitchen, it used to be an outside wall!


And, because that was the outside wall, that is the original 1915 siding! Of course I kept it – all I did was give it a good cleaning and paint it back to its original white.

My dining room table was built by my Grandparents and my mom gave it to me years ago and I expect it to be with me for the rest of my life.


The chairs are new from Amazon (check em out here – aren’t they SO cool!?). I thrifted for a long time for dining room chairs and I just never found anything that struck me as right. For xmas one year many years ago I received them as a gift!


You can see how I built closet doors for both my laundry room and shoe/coat closet. I am still pretty darned happy with them though I took them down and added castors so now they’re rolling doors instead of hinged.


The old dresser I refinished many years ago makes great storage for board games, playing cards, hats and gloves.

(If you’ve been following along then you know I actually had a different dresser here when I first added my office to this space. I think this old beast fits in better so I put the pretty red dresser out in my guest bedroom.)


It made such a great room divider!

From there I want to mention my laundry room 🙂 because it happens to be right smack in the middle of my dining room. (I just finished my little laundry room remodel and it is without a doubt the happiest room in my house!)


If you look at the old before picture you’ll see my Grandparents’ washer and dryer were in this room as well and they had a wall cabinet my Grandpa built above them.

I saved that cabinet during demolition and, with a quick paint job and new hardware, its now not ten feet from its old home and above my laundry machine too!


Speaking of things that didn’t move far: yup, that’s the same mirror!


I still can’t believe that the other half of this room used to be my Grandparents’ completely floor-less and totally unfinished wood shed.


Yes, that is my mom helping me put in my new floor!

I knew I wanted an enormous closet so the whole north wall of this room gave me that.

But with my desk here I’m constantly in this room now and enjoying it!


The color on the walls I chose new when I repainted the room. Its called Fait Accompli by Valspar and I picked it up at my local Ace Hardware.


I love the contrast it creates, one thing about so much white trim is that my rooms are always bright regardless of how dark my color choices are.


Over my birthday, six day “stay-cation”, that I took I decided that this would be my first real gallery room and literally stole all of the artwork I own from almost every single other room of the house. I just went for it!

You can see in the before picture that there used to be three windows there. They made perfect cabinet doors in my kitchen! The barn door closet is housing my electrical panels and more storage.


Both of the storage benches were made by my grandparents many years ago. (See the before and after of the largest bench here, I fixed it, made a cushion for it and then added a stencil too!)


What I really love with my office here is that now I’m actually spending time in this room! Before it was just my pass through for coats and shoes etc in my regular day to day life. Admittedly my dining room table is rarely used for eating… Its generally covered in whatever supplies I need for the current project I’m working on.


It actually looks a lot nicer than I expected lol


Finally, for the first time since I began on my renovation in 2014 I can honestly say that this room is FINISHED!

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  3 questions
  • Just curious... you said you didnt wash the walls or primer, but both of those things are listed in the supply list. What's up with that?

  • Kelly J. Tinney Kelly J. Tinney on May 12, 2020

    I hope this isn’t a personal question, but didn’t you turn the smoke damage into your home owners insurance? There was obviously a lot of damage and maybe even possible health risks because of it (I certainly hope none) but I would think with the clean up, repairs, etc. insurance would’ve paid for the damage.

  • Barb Barb on May 13, 2020

    where is the kitchen?

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