Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

It's time for a few more major changes around here. I love change... around our house. 

Life changes? Eh, I could do without the major ones, with the exception of weddings and babies. How about you?

So our giant to do list begins with the garage/front entry. They're one in the same you see. You walk in our house from the garage, and about 5 feet in front of you is the front door. When we remodeled our kitchen 2 and a half years ago, we ended up taking out every inch or the red quarry stone floor that was original to the house. That stuff was heavy duty! It was about a 1/2" thick and set in concrete. But it was red, and that's not easy to work with, nor is it one of my favorite colors. It had to go. We went with a 12"x12" ceramic tile, brick set. It was cost effective enough to fill the large-ish space that is our entry, half bathroom and laundry room. Well a little over a year later, the grout started coming loose, and in a short time was completely gone. Awesome... Now tiles are popping left and right, and we're not so happy about that.
Last week, in a fit of rage (well not really, just annoyance) I grabbed the liquid nails and re-attached 4 tiles to the floor with it, then re-grouted (my first grout job *tear*). About 3 days later the tiles are wiggling and grout's poppin' all over again! Argh! I was kind of hoping that band-aid would last through the three holidays we host, but it didn't even make it through our Halloween party. Sooo we have no choice but to tear it all out, figure out the real problem (apparently it's the plywood that's giving too much bounce), and re-do the whole shebang less than 3 years after it was installed!

We have a standard closet in this entry as well. Part of me wants to pull a Shelley & Cason and turn it into a bench nook, but we have a window and door that look directly into it at all times. If it's not in tip top organized shape, it might just be the first hot mess you see when you come to our house unannounced!

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At the same time, we're planning to gut our half-bathroom and give it a little more character. 

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This bathroom sums up what we would love to do! We already have a stained pine plank wall in our basement, so we're not jumping on the plank wall bandwagon, just adding more planks to our wagon. I'm not sure if we'll paint it a color, or just White Down by Benjamin Moore like the rest of our house's painted woodwork. Coincidentally, our guest bedroom is painted Palladian Blue just like this bathroom.

I've also loved this vanity from Home Decorator's Collection before I even saw it in this bathroom. I would love to DIY my own, sort of like Tracey and her husband did.

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 We've tossed around the idea of using the scraps of wood floor from our kitchen in here, and a herringbone pattern would be right up my alley! I'm not sure if we're up for the challenge though...

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Another major change we've discussed is remodeling our laundry room into a mudroom. This would involve moving the door in the garage a few feet (or maybe like 10 feet). That alone might blow the budget! But it would be awesome for our boys to be able to take off their dirty clothes and throw them right into a hamper. Or probably on the floor, then I'll throw them in the hamper. Nah, they'll learn! 

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This is sort of the setup I'm thinking for lockers, but maybe add doors to conceal the mess. We have a window in the middle that I would do a bench under. Alright, wake up Lindsey!

So this post is super long, way longer than I intended! These are just some ideas for one area of our house. I think this better be a two-part post, or maybe three-part...