Schutta Entry Remodel

Entries can welcome you home - or trip you up like airport security. Everything passes through this little room: groceries, coats, boots, car seats, backpacks, furniture, amazon deliveries, take-out, everything that comes into our home passes through this portal. Recent home designs have bolstered the entry with a mudroom or large walk-in closet. But older homes are stuck with itsy bitsy entries unless a major addition is done. Not all hope is lost - several design features can improve any entry:

Coat Storage (limit to coats used weekly - plus guests - then store off-season coats elsewhere)
Shoe Storage (consider each family member’s weekly needs)
Key Mount (on the wall or in a drawer)
Table or Wall Shelf (for setting down coffee or a purse while switching coats)
Bench (for sitting to put on shoes)
Character (personal flair)

Character can be added to any entry in the wall color or decor. It orients you back to your own haven. It also introduces guests to the tone you set in your home. Is your home casual or formal? Is the color palette warm or cool? There is no wrong answer (so long as you don’t mind a raised eye brow every now and then).

When we purchased this split level home - the 5’-0” x 8’-0” entry seemed generous compared to many of the other houses we viewed. The space quickly filled up. When guests tried to leave, they played a mini game of Twister to reach around one another and grab coats or shoes. The original bi-fold doors were worn and falling off the tracks, so we removed those right away. We were left looking into a reminder of how mismatched and disorganized our first newlywed home really was.

I had a vision for a better type of entry closet. There was so much waisted space above the drooping hat shelf and that I lamented leaving vacant - but to balance boxes on the thin shelf made it even sadder. The only seating was on the stairs or the floor. Often more than one person was trying to find a place to sit to put on their shoes. Many gave up and did amateur yoga forms while tying shoe laces. The finishes in the entry had been redone several times, but the texture of old wall paper and peeled up laminate tiles just got worse over the years. We finally decided to remodel this central hub of our home.

The design made the most of what we had - vertical height. So we layered three types of storage in the space of one closet:

Full 3’-0” deep High Storage (fit two totes deep and 4 wide, for a total of 8 storage containers!)
Coat Closet with Shelf & Rod (same as before - plus additional supports so it didn’t droop)
Shoe storage bins below a new Bench (research container storage sizes prior to building cubbies because the options are limited)

PROGRESS PHOTOS

During demo - we were first surprised at the size of the header above the existing door frame. We knew it wasn’t structure (always talk to a professional before demoing a wall).

My favorite detail in this project was the custom shape of the bench. By the door to the garage, the bench could only be 8” - this could have worked for the entire width, but the wall next to the start would allow for a much more standard 16” deep bench. So we made an “S” curve to allow the door to open a full 90 degrees. By keeping part of the bench deeper - we could set a car seat or regular bags on that half of the bench.

The final details of the entry were most satisfying. The utility of the storage and bench took away pain points from before the renovation. But the color and décor were features that made me smile everytime I walked in the front door. Seeing the contrast of the light butcher block seat to the blue-green wall, all framed by white trim and furniture provided a cohesive design in the entry. It finally felt like I was walking into our home.

Cost saving strategies for this project included:

DIY demo and construction
Replacing the steel garage door
Butcher Block Bench with polyurethane finish (leftover from a craft table project)
DIY Cabinet Doors out of plywood with square edge
Laminate Vinyl Plank flooring
Ikea shoe cubbies
Walmart rug set
Repaint (a fresh color brightens the room that welcomes you home)