Before and after: the foyer

Remember when I was so excited to get my numbered hooks from Pottery Barn mounted in the kitchen? (I had no idea it was almost two years ago to the day that I posted about them until I went looking for that post.)

Well, they were awesome and made a huge difference in our lives ... until the weight of the backpacks yanked them out of the wall, anchors and all. Leaving ginormous holes in my kitchen wall for months, so you can imagine how pleased I was about all that.

So. Last week our foyer (which is a generous name for the hallway that leads from our front door to our kitchen) underwent a mini-makeover. Here's the Before:

And here's the After:

It's the exact same faux board-and-batten treatment I did in Amelia's room, our master bedroom and the stairwell right before Amelia was born, and we've been thrilled with those areas ever since. Doing it here was both a natural extension of the B&B on the stairs and a practical solution for the storage problem we have.

Looking down from the stairs to the front door Before:

And After:

The tee-tiny little foyer area Before:

And After:

Standing in the kitchen looking toward the front door Before:

And After:

After, looking slightly more toward the right so you can see the treatment a little more clearly:

And After, what it looks like when you walk in the front door (without junk on it, obviously):

And WITH junk on it, which is what it will look like all the time:

But it's a necessary evil, Internet. Lots of little people living here, and without this area, all this stuff gets piled on my kitchen table every. flipping. day.

One thing I would specifically like to point out (besides the fact that I didn't clean off my kitchen table to take these pictures) is that this is a standard-size hallway. It's not wide, not large.

See? Here's Jake standing in it. Jake is 4.

When he stretches out, he can just about touch each wall.

But we think we can make it work without killing ourselves on those hooks ... they don't stick out beyond the door trim at the end of the hall, so we think we're okay. I'll let you know if we end up with bruises.

Oh, and the hooks we used ... I kept my beloved Pottery Barn numbered hooks after they yanked out hunks of my sheetrock, so we were able to reuse them.

I had four of those, and then for the little kids, I added two hooks that I picked up at Lowe's for about $4 each. We mounted them a lot lower so that Jake and Amelia can easily reach them.

And there you have it!