A Welcoming Entrance

Can you believe that we’re participating in Susan’s 17th Between Naps on the Poarch “Metamorphosis Monday” blog party?! Well… truth be told, it hasn’t been 17 parties for us… but we try to play each week with Susan and her guests because it’s so much fun!!

Welcome to this week’s transformation!

And what am I sharing? The transformation of the foyer and hallway in my previous condo – it went from 80s pink and flesh to contemporary stone.

I wish I had gotten a before photo of the foyer!! But fortunately I picked up the camera before all of the old tile had been removed!! Phew!!

OMG… isn’t it horrible?!

These ugly tiles only extended to the pile you see in the photo below (left) or if you’d rather, just past where my puppy’s tail is pointing… the rest of the hallway was covered in old, dirty pile carpet like what you see in the photo to the right.

Before I could lay any tile (yep… me… I’m the tile setter in our renovation team!) I had to prepare the floor with an anti-fracture membrane. Below I’m rolling on a special adhesive – next comes the membrane. This was an important step because the condo floor was cement… any naturally occurring cracks would have lead to cracks in the tile and/or grout without the membrane. You can see the membrane in the photo below these two.

Let the tiling begin!!

I used the same tile that I used in the kitchen (see the kitchen HERE). Continuity is important to me, particularly in a one-floor condo like this. I think it would have been a bad design move to have a different tile in the foyer and hallway from that of a kitchen that was only a few steps away. But that doesn’t mean that I did exactly the same thing with that tile. I DID use the same off-set pattern with the tile, but I utilized the China Multi slate in a different way… I also created a different pattern for the foyer itself. You can just see that pattern in the photo below… but you’ll see the finished results as you scroll down to the end of this post!

Here are photos of the finished hallway!!

In the two pictures above you can see how I used a 1x2 slate (China Multi) as a divider at all thresholds. I did this for two reasons 1) it was a nice way to end a run of tiles (like above right) and 2) I used an off-set pattern when laying the floor tiles… if I hadn’t created an “end/beginning” at each threshold the pattern would have naturally changed as you entered the room from the individual off-set tiles I’d laid like in the photo above to long off-set columns. In know… confusing. But look at the pattern and imagine looking at it sideways… that should give you an idea of what I’m talking about. So… the room to the left is the storage room… when you stand at the threshold the tile floor in that space looks just like it does in photo above – not in columns. The hallway to the right leads to the bathroom (I wrote about this FAB transformation too. You can see it HERE) – there’s a slate tile threshold here, too and the tiles change direction to maintain the off-set pattern. The door down and to the right is to a bedroom that was carpeted… I tiled that threshold too so that the plan was consistent. Hope this all makes sense!! Yikes!! :-)

The finished foyer!

In the photo above, you can more clearly see the 1x2 colourful slate I used as an accent in the boarder.

I was experiencing a mixture of emotions when I took the above photo… I’d cleaned the condo for the new owners and was about the close and lock the door for the last time. I was so sad to be leaving this home – my first home with my husband – but I was so very excited to be starting a new set of projects in our first actual house. Once the door was closed behind me though, I was looking forward to new things. I have photos and I have memories… but my life is in the here, now and future… never a regret!

Thanks for dropping in to DesignTies to check out our contribution to this week’s Metamorphosis Mondays blog party. Make your way back to Between Naps on the Porch so that you can see some other blog party contributions. Thanks Susan!

Victoria from Edin Interiors