Organizing the Front Hall Closet

Our front hall closet was a bit of a dark hole.  It still had the original builder's paint from when the house was built fifteen years ago and it was not well organized (as opposed to the rest of the house that works like a well-oiled machine - haha).  Since we are hoping to sell our house and move to a farm next year I thought it was time to start the ball rolling on the primping and preening that happens before one sells a home.  I realize that the front hall closet is not going to make or break selling the house, but I figure baby steps, baby steps ...

I started by taking everything out of the closet and giving the walls a good scrubbing.   They were actually pretty horrifying given that there had been fifteen years of shoes and things being tossed against builder's paint.  I painted the closet with some leftover semi-gloss (aka scrubbable) paint.  It looked so pretty with the fresh paint that I really hated to mess it up with coats and things, but I did anyway since the pile of coats on the hall floor was getting in our way.

I also sorted and decluttered the wall pockets that we have hanging on the back of the closet door.   If you don't have one of these for your closet, I would highly recommend it.  I found one with mesh pockets so you can see the contents which helps when you are looking for something.

I also removed an old IKEA dresser that we had at the bottom of the closet from the days when everyone lived at home and we needed lots and lots of places for mitts and hats.  I replaced it with a shoe rack that I got curbside - thanks neighbours!  It fits perfectly and now our shoes look all organized. So I hung the coats back up and put the baskets in that I had recently bought for the upper shelf to store our mitts and hats and scarves. I chose houndstooth baskets to add a little interest to the closet and I labelled them with yellow tags.  Do you want to see a before photo?  Sure you do - so then you can see how wonderful the after is.

The only thing I have left to do is to find a tall narrow wicker basket to put in beside the shoe rack for the paper recycling.

Our Front Hall

Our front hall is tiny.  Really tiny.  Too tiny for all the giant shoes and boots it needs to hold.  Too tiny for all those feet that land on the mat on a wet or snowy day.  Too tiny for a small console table.  But it's what we have.

The door on the left side is for the front hall closet and the door on the right is the back of our front door.  There is a little dog bed at the foot of the stairs because our faithful dog waits for me by the front door when I go out.  

We needed to make this area both functional and pretty.  It is the first thing people see when they enter our home and the last thing they see when they leave.  It is a busy area with a lot of needs. 

So in pursuit of making the entry pretty, I painted the end wall a medium gray-blue colour (Nimbus Gray by Benjamin Moore) to give the area a focal point.  

We also needed somewhere for keys and glasses and purses, so we put up a pewter key rack made by Brian Seagull, a Nova Scotian artist.  I use the straw purse, bought at the thrift store, to hold my glasses.

The woodblock print, we hung in the entry, is a picture of Bristol sketched in about 1795.  We bought it on eBay after my husband lived in Bristol for six months in 2002 on a work contract.  The kids and I went over to the UK to visit him and we had a wonderful Christmas holidays together, so it holds special memories for us.

The details in the woodblock print are amazing.  See the ships sailing into the harbour in Bristol?

And on the other side are a group of people standing on the hill overlooking Bristol.

The mirror in the front hall was one we already had, but it had a gold frame so I painted it black, to complete the vignette.  

So there you have it - it's our welcome to the world, with a little bit of personality and a few organizational pieces to keep it working.

What about your front hall?  Have you added some interest to say welcome home? How do you deal with keys, glasses, purses?