The Initial Projects - The Entryway

It's time for another transformation!  (I'm a sucker for a good makeover -- which is also why I love the Better After blog -- I get my daily dose of makeovers!)

Today's transformation is our lovely entryway/mudroom.  That's right -- it's a two-in-one room -- both an entryway for our guests and our mudroom. We are also lucky enough to have a walk-in closet in our entryway that holds our junk treasures.  This room was added to our house in 1998 from some space in the garage.  And here's where it gets confusing.....my dad took room half of the two car garage (making it a one-car) to make the entryway/mud room; then he added on his own 1.5 car garage with a workshop.  The work done in the house was to change the original outside patio into a solarium, the original entry closet into a pantry and create a whole new space for the house.  WHEW!

In other words....the fabulous space was an add-on.  We did the sprucing up in this room by changing the floors and the wall colors and adding some of our own touches.  Here's the step-by-step process:

Kevin -- "the fixer".  I tried to pull up the linoleum in the entryway and found out it was VERY glued to the particle board underneath.  Just another one of my home-improvement "oops".  Kevin came in and filled in the area I had ripped up and layed our linoleum tiles over my mess.  You would never know it started out as a very DIY gone wrong.

Woo Hoo -- Half way done!

As you can see he did a great job covering up my flub -- and an awesome job in general!

If you think you want to try this DIY yourself -- here's our steps:


1.  MEASURE MEASURE MEASURE!  -- this is SO important in figuring out how much tile you need -- it will also help with budgeting the costs of your project.

We bought our tile at Menards -- it was on clearance and we were lucky enough to snatch up every last box they had -- just enough for our project

2.  CLEAN -- we were very fortunate in that we had linoleum already on the floor and we could just put the new tiles over it.  But in order for the new sticky-back tiles to stay put on the floor, we had to have a clean surface to adhere to.  So clean it thoroughly and make say "Adios!" do the dust.

3.  STICK -- peel the tile backing away and place where you want it (NOTE -- we didn't have to pull up our baseboards because we could slide the laminate tiles underneath them.  If you can't do this you may want to pull the baseboards off and reattach them when your done.

4.  CUT -- you will have to cut some of the squares if your room is not a perfect size like ours.  Measure twice and cut once and you'll be glad  you did!

And I'm also linking up to The Idea Room: