Ok i’m gonna be totally upfront and honest from day one so you and I are on the same page okay?  

When I saw the email from Jeffrey Court Tiles telling me I was in the running for this Fall Renovation Challenge I literally thought I was dreaming, I had to read it twice…and then screamed.   I mean it wasn’t a hysterical scream, but it definitely got hubby’s attention.   I mean c’mon, we are a small-ish DIY blog in comparison to some of the other contenders, and even though we have been DIY-ing our house for four years, we are freshmen, newbies, still learning as we go.  But sweet mother of god, I wanted to do this challenge with everything in me. All I had to do was convince my hubby “what’s one more project, right?!”

I went into my “play it cool/be casual/hum along to the tunes playing in the background” mode, even though my mind was spinning with all the possible DIY’s we could tackle for this challenge. As usual my hubby was a good sport (even though he rolls his eyes, shakes his head and whispers the occasional WTF) and he jumped on board! 

Honest moment, if I hadn’t convinced hubby I  would never have been able to accept this challenge, in fact I could never tackle half the projects “we” take on without him.   As anyone would tell you, I’m the one that comes up with all the crazy ideas, and he’s the brawn that carries them out for me (as in, he does the heavy lifting, I do the floofing!).  We are truly a team in every sense of the word.

Ok so back to our house - I mean there are sooooo many rooms left to reno in our fixer upper, especially rooms that could use some beautiful new tile. Specifically: two full bathrooms and a kitchen backsplash, but those all seemed a bit too much for a couple of greenhorns like us to tackle in our first big Renovation Challenge.  Especially with such tight timelines (hubby does have a day job, works 50-60 hours a week AND we spend our weekends up north AND our youngest just started college…so, we definitely have ALL the time in the world…..NOT!. No pressure WHATSOEVER)

 So if you’re still wondering, of course we ACCEPTED the Jeffrey Court Fall Reno Challenge and we will be making over our ENTRYWAY!  This area was on the DIY list for this fall anyway because we really need a new front door. Translation: we get little piles of snow on the floor every winter on the inside of the door and have been using one of those old “draft snakes” to take care of the problem. I hadn’t really thought of replacing the tile but sometimes things just fall into place! ALSO I have been dreaming about a board and batten feature for this area since we bought the damn house 4 years ago so it’s about time to make it happen.

Here is the current state of things in our entryway….it’s a narrow dark space and one of the least decorated spaces in our home. That’s all about to change!

Maybe this little entry way doesn’t seem like an exciting makeover to some but I have so many great ideas I literally can’t sleep at night!  So follow along and watch us turn our cold, tired and just plain old sad entry way into something that screams, “well hey there sexy, c’mon in” with a new front door, tiles, wall treatments and everything in between!

I hope you’ll follow along and in a couple of weeks i’m gonna hound you all to vote for us and our entryway makeover because one thing is for sure, I can always count on you guys!

PS…don’t forget to check out the other designers, they are incredibly talented! And book mark this website so you can keep up to date on all things challenge related!

Michele xo