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Little Brick Cottage…Front Entry From Start to End!

Yay! I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to be able to start this new series…because it means the “Little Brick Cottage” is done! Yep, all done, every single room! So this, part 1 in the series for ‘reveals’ of the completely renovated antique brick cottage, will feature the front entry and just in case you missed some or all the other posts on the progress I’ll try to be as descriptive in this post from the beginning to the end of the renovation, and give you plenty of hyperlinks for you to click to see more details for that subject.

Here’s where it all started:

This is the outside entrance to the front door. Remember? This door is an amazing 42 inches wide! We bought this antique brick house at the very end of December, 2011. That’s just about 3 months ago, and we’ve been busy getting it completely renovated.

Now, let’s go inside. Here’s the view of that same front door looking from the living room back towards the front entry. Before and After!

In the before pic you see the light tan carpet that covered the gorgeous wood floors…well ok, so they weren’t so gorgeous at first, but with some sanding and cleaning and fresh coats of stain, oil and finish they’re gorgeous now. (I’ll talk about the changes in the living room in a later post.)

Here’s another before and after pic, only this angle is looking towards the closet door in the front entry, so then the 42” entry door would be on your left.

So how did I take this front entry from the, can I say, dumpy look, to this fresh, welcoming entrance?

Dark and dumpy…the carpet and pad are too thick and the front door hardly opens because the bottom of it rubs on the carpet.

The wood floors looked nasty. I had such ‘stars’ in my eyes, I don’t think I realized just how awful they looked. I was just so thrilled to find wood floors under the carpet and vinyl we ripped out. And especially finding this original wide oak plank flooring with square nails in the front entry and kitchen, now that was a real treasure to me.

The wood floors were carefully sanded to remove the black tar stuff on them, but not so much to remove the wonderful age. Here’s how they look now:

I love, love, love these old floors!

Beadboard installed 5 feet high, with simple top trim and primed. Patching the walls is still needed though. New light fixture installed. (btw: I thought I could just paint the dark brown on the trim and doors without having to prime it….uh, nope! It all needed 3 coats!)

Crack out the caulk. Caulk is my best friend, it covers so many imperfections. Now paint…paint…paint and paint some more. (I’m so glad that I like to paint, this was a whole house of painting)

The original closet door with its lovely old ceramic knob, as well as the front entry door, and all the trim in the front entry we were able to keep all in place, just caulked and painted fresh white.

Here’s the front door now. I used a few razor blades to clean off the old paint and caulk and glazing from the glass panels. Just futzy work, but what a difference that makes. Then I re-caulked and primed and painted the door.

This doorbell is no longer working, maybe someday I’ll get it working again. Someone asked me why I didn’t just take it out, but I felt it was so darn cute, I couldn’t remove it, even if it no longer worked. It’s part of the history of the house.

I purposely did the same fairly neutral colors in this room as you’ll see in other parts of the house, greys, pale yellow, distressed brown wood floor and lots of white. Here are my thoughts on that: First, it’s a small house so carrying the same theme through the rooms help the space expand. And second, I love to keep the walls neutral for the decorations to pop and create the actual color scheme. This yellow and gray will allow the new family that will be living here to accent in practically any color they want…can you imagine reds? Oranges? Blues? Even green? Or black and white? I can see it.

I love the ability to order hardware online, like these gorgeous hooks that expand the closet space in a very stylish manner.

The detail of the wide hat hook and the tall top hook with it, so charming.

Well, there it is, the front entry of our little brick cottage. Did I miss any details you’d like to hear more of? I’ll be glad to share with you whatever I can about it, just ask.

Here are more posts featuring this little brick cottage renovation projects:

front entry sdtips
 living room before and after SDTips
SimpleDecoratingTips.com Little Brick Cottage Dining Room Before and After
front bedroom reno before SDTips
Bedroom Redo Before SDTips
simpledecoratingtips.com little brick cottage bathroom before and after
little brick cottage back entry SDTips
DIY canning jar lights SDTips
Mixing Hardware Styles SDTips
SIMPLEDECORATINGTIPS.com Antique Brick Cottage Farmhouse Style Kitchen Before and After

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Welcome to Simple Decorating Tips! I’m Liz, the author, and I’m so glad you’re here!

My goal is to encourage you with DIY tips, techniques and tutorials so you feel empowered to join in the fun! Along with this DIY blog, I have a DIY shop, Redo Your Furniture!
The shop is stocked with amazing DIY products! Fusion Mineral Paints, ReDesign Transfers, Decoupage, Waxes, loads of DIY Goodies and more! Even if you're not close to where the shop is in Wisconsin, good news... I ship nationwide, (USA) daily! Check out the link here and let's get your DIY on!
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Welcome to Simple Decorating Tips! I'm Liz, the author, and I'm so glad you're here! My goal is to encourage you with DIY tips, techniques and tutorials so you feel empowered to join in the fun! Along with this DIY blog, I have a DIY shop, Redo Your Furniture!
The shop is stocked with amazing DIY products! Fusion Mineral Paints, ReDesign Transfers, Decoupage, Waxes, loads of DIY Goodies and more! Even if you're not close to where the shop is in Wisconsin, good news... I ship nationwide, (USA) daily! Check out the link here and let's get your DIY on!


Disclosure Policy: According to FTC guidelines, I want you to be aware that some of the content of this blog may be a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post. Thanks for reading along, Liz

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Sharing is great! Please feel free to share this blog with your friends, as well as on Facebook and Pinterest and Flipboard and Houzz and YouTube the more the merrier! I appreciate you stopping by. But please remember that all photos, images, text and content are owned by SimpleDecoratingTips.com. So anything you share, please be sure it always links back to my original post it came from. Please do not remove watermarks, crop or edit anything without written permission from me first.

Disclosure Policy: According to the FTC guidelines, I want you to be aware that this blog is a source of income and may occasionally incorporate endorsements or testimonials and shopping links. It is important to me to disclose this to you. The content of this blog is a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. Products provided to me by my advertising partners for my review are given to me free of charge with no cost to myself. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and always make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post. Thanks for reading along, Liz

Disclosure Policy According to Federal Trade Commission guidelines, I want you to be aware that this blog is a source of income and may occasionally incorporate endorsements or testimonials. It is important to me to disclose this to you. The content of this blog is a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. Products provided to me by my advertising partners for my review are given to me free of charge with no cost to myself. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way. My truthful opinion will be what I state, no matter if I'm getting paid or not. Accuracy and truth are the priority for me on this blog's information, no matter if it's about a product or anything else. Not every product or service or store etc. may be mentioned in each and every post as an affiliate. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and always make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post.

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