Front Hall Before and "During"

The front hall is not finished, as we still need to install the baseboards and paint everything (white on front door, baseboards and spindles; lighter colour on walls), and some day down the road we plan to replace the front door. However, I thought this would be a good chance to show the progress thus far. We didn't take the greatest before photos of the house, but here are a few pics of the front hall from the day we took possession. As you can see the front hall was an enclosed space separate from the living room and stairwell.

Here is a dusty pic of the front hall with the plaster removed. It was at this point that we knew the walls were not load-bearing and could be removed; once Meredith heard this, there was no stopping her from taking it down.

Here are a few pics of Meredith's parents, niece and nephew helping us take out the wall.

It's funny looking back at these photos because I remember giving Meredith a hard time that she was going to need to find a carpenter to finish the stairs because that was "beyond my skill level". After another year of renovating the house, I decided that I had developed the required skills to finish the stairs myself. Of course, along the way we also installed electrical, insulated the walls, installed drywall, primed/painted the walls, installed hardwood floors, and installed slate tile. Here are two pics of the front hall today, including the new mirror. Please ignore the ugly sheet covering the front door ... ugh ... we need to get some cheap blinds until the door is replaced.

Reclaimed Oak Mirror

We got this old mirror from my Mom several months ago. We thought about re-painting some or all of the frame, but it just did not go with the rest of our house, so I have been thinking about a way to re-frame it since the mirror/glass is very high quality.

When I was removing the wood shelves from the built-in cabinets in the living room, this got me thinking that we could use those knotty oak shelves to re-frame the mirror. Would that make this a "re-claimed" mirror? I think so.

The first step in creating the mirror was to cut the boards to the appropriate lengths, and to cut a groove in the back of each board (where the glass will sit).

I then sanded the front and sides of the boards with 60 and 80 grit sandpaper to remove the old finish and round the edges. I did this prior to assembly because I wanted to have a dramatic shadow where the horizontal and vertical boards meet.

I then joined the vertical and horizontal boards using biscuits and wood glue, as well as metal brackets screwed into the back of the boards. This assembly was too large for any of my clamps, so I held the structure together by using tie-downs (the kind you use to hold lumber in a car/truck) to squeeze the frame between two long pieces of 2x4. Clamps were also used to keep the pieces from popping up at the seams (i.e. to keep the frame flat).

I smacked the frame with a bag of nails and a screwdriver, as I thought this would add to the reclaimed look. The finished frame was then sanded with 120 grit sandpaper and finished with oil-based stain and polyurethane. Once that was dry, we inserted the mirror and prepared the back of the frame for hanging. Our lovely readers then helped Meredith discourage me from hanging the mirror in the living room, so it is now hung and looking great in the front hall. We will post more revealing photos of the entire front hall once everything is painted.

Where Should We Put This Mirror?

I built this mirror out of an old mirror and some scrap wood (more on that, as well as some better photos, later). However, we are having some trouble deciding where to hang it. The plan was to hang this mirror over the fireplace, but I didn't really factor in the added size of the new frame, so it might actually be too big for that space. The other option is to hang it vertically in the front hall. If neither of these options work, we really don't have a place for a mirror of this size in our house right now. Any thoughts on which location looks better?

1) Over the fireplace - This is where I want to put it as long as it won't look ridiculous. There would be about 1.5" from the top of the frame to the ceiling and 1.5" from the bottom of the frame to the top of the two higher cabinets (12" to the lower/middle mantle piece).

2) Front hall - The mirror actually fits well into this space and would reflect light into our living room. The door and trim to the left will be painted white soon and will be replaced altogether some day. The only issue presented by adding a mirror here is that we really need a place to hang keys/leashes/coats in the front hall, so adding a mirror here would take away the wall space needed for a rack.

Think We Like Slate?

We finished installing slate tile in the front hall and fireplace hearth (the same tile we used in the bathroom). We still need to caulk between the tile and hardwood (which will cover the light gray mortar that shows up a lot around the edges of the tile in the photo below), but we had to special order caulk to match our grout and I didn't want to wait to do a blog post. The cutting in this job was pretty simple ... just a matter of making sure everything was centered and symmetrical. Laying the tiles was a little more difficult ... trying to get the tile to be even in height with the previously installed hardwood proved to be quite a task ... it pretty much just required doing trial and error to see how much mortar was needed under each tile. It worked out though and should look good once we get baseboards installed and stuff. We have started discussing the plan to cover the ugly brick on our fireplace, but that's a topic for another post.

Plan for Stairs Revisited

A couple of months ago, we talked about the plan for the stairs in our front hall. After some deliberation, we decided on the plan below, which involves adding a railing onto the landing and curving the two bottom steps around the posts.

I really like this plan, but after tearing out the old steps, I started to reconsider the plan. With the stairs turning towards the living room like this, it might prove to be a pain sometimes when we are going in and out through the front door (and when moving furniture). Accordingly, I came up with a new option (see below). This option wraps the stairs around the landing, providing access from the front hall and the living room. By cutting off the corner of the stairs/landing, the stairs do not take up as much space as if they were square. I am considering making the stairs/landing fully rounded (i.e. quarter-circle), but that might prove difficult with the bullnose on the landing, so this is the plan for now.

Any thoughts or preferences? We are truly 50/50 on this decision. The first option looks a little better in my opinion, but the second option is simpler and more functional.