Changing up the Entryway
With the heat continuing outdoors (humidity sucks) work continues indoors. When we painted the living room two weeks ago, we brought the same paint into the entryway since they are open to each other. We just painted the upper portion of the walls knowing we would get around to finishing it off sooner or later. No time like the present.
We started in the workshop, cutting strips of thin plywood (luan) into strips about 4 inches wide and 70 inches long.
I was on the other end helping to guide the plywood since we were working with such a long piece. Once we had enough pieces cut, Jim gave them a quick hand sanding, mainly along the edges.
We had thrown around ideas for installation before we started, some of which involved removing the baseboards. Hoping to avoid that if at all possible, we settled on using this thin plywood and resting it directly on the top of the baseboards. Some smart we are. We started at one corner and worked our way across the wall using a quarter as a spacer.
We used the nail gun to attach the boards to the wall.
We continued around the three walls. The second wall has the back door and the third wall has double closet doors so those went fairly quickly. Here is a close up look of the boards spaced out evenly.
On the one uninterrupted wall, we added a 10 inch wide board directly on top of the luan boards, then attached a 7 inch shelf.
Next up we needed brackets for the shelf. At first we were going with two brackets but changed our minds and went with three. Glad we did. So it was back to the workshop to make the brackets.
First Jim made a template which we brought into the house to see if the proportions were right. We made a few changes to the template, then Jim glued and nailed three pieces of wood together to make up one bracket.
We traced the template onto the wood and headed over to the bandsaw to do the cutting.
We did this times three and after lots of sanding it was time to attach our brackets to the wall. You can also see we added trim to the top of luan boards on the other two walls.
With installation finished it was time to fill ALL the holes and once that was dry it got a good hand sanding.
Next up was painting. We painted a coat of primer and two coats of white paint.
With the paint dry and all touch-ups done we added four black coat hooks.
It is hard to get a good picture of the whole area since it is 6 feet wide to the closet doors. Here goes…The closet side,
And the bench side…
And the whole space.
So far we are digging it. While the paint cures, I am deciding what to put of the shelf if anything. Now I may need to paint the front door. Hmmm…
Have a great long weekend if you live in Canada.
Later