Well we’ve made it into the finishing phase of the Dreamhouse and with so many projects on the go at the same time, we’re beginning to feel a little bit of blogger ADD. With the whole house to finish at once we’ve been having a hard time figuring how to document them all without having the blog to descend into the chaos of multi-tasking that our evenings & weekends have.

But then a couple of weeks ago our friend and fellow PARA Blog Crewer Michelle of Eamon & Jack suggested a few of us participate in the 2014 Calling It Home One Room Challenge linkup and Kes sand I figured that might be a start to getting us organized.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, The One Room Challenge was started by Linda at Calling it Home. It’s a challenge she holds twice a year, where a group of super talented design bloggers completely redo an entire room in 6 weeks. In the linkup event, bloggers from all over play along and post their own “One Room” projects and share them each week. Kes and I actually have a ton of projects that we’ll be working on over the next 6 weeks as we barrel toward our construction completion date, but we’re hoping a 6 week blog deadline will give us the kick in the respective pants we’ll need to make sure we aren’t neglecting all of you following along this journey with us!

Choosing a room:

With so many to choose from we had a hard time narrowing down which ‘One Room’ to share & document the progress on. Then we realized what better place to start than the literal beginning of the house – the front door.

Operation Organized Entryway

If you remember waaay back to our first Design Week series, a mud room was on the ‘Nice-to-haves’ side of our wish list. When we revealed original floor plans however, you might have noticed that it was one thing that didn’t seem to make the cut…

Washington Residence Ground Floor Plan by KW Design

Well we’ve since made a couple of adjustments to those plans. Here’s what the main floor looks like now…

Washington Residence Ground Floor Interior Furniture Plan by Lisa Lev Design

You’ll notice 2 major changes. First, we’ve removed the foyer closet. And second, we’ve re-located the powder room. Those might seem like little things but the benifits of making those 2 changes are so huge to how we’ll use our ground floor space that this one suggestion alone is probably why we’d say hiring Lisa was worth. every. penny.

Not only did it open up the sight lines to the back of the house letting a ton of light through, but it offers easy access to the kitchen straight from the front door, it gives us a wall in the family room to mount our tv on, and most importantly, it gives us a nice long hallway between the front and garage entrances that we can work with to keep our coats, hats & shoes organized. It’s not exactly a typical mudroom per se, but it’s probably the next best thing and one that’ll actually work well for our family.

Close up of Entryway Plan

The plan…

So here’s what we have planned for Operation Organized Entryway.  We’ll be turning this:

Into this:

Entryway Plan: Built in closet & accessory storage, with
open hanging storage on either side and built in benches below

The to-do list:

To break it down, here’s what we’ve got on the list to tackle over the next 6 weeks to bring this plan to life

• Prep the subfloor
• Lay tiles
• Paint
• Purchase and install wardrobe cabinets
• Customize cabinets to give them a built in look
• Build & install benches
• Hang wall hooks & accessories.

A little Pin-spiration…

Wondering how it’ll all come together? Check out our Foyer/Entry Inspiration board for some of the looks that inspired our plan…

Follow The Dreamhouse Project’s board Foyer/Entry Inspiration on Pinterest.

So what do you think? Do you have an organized entryway in your home? Is it one of the projects on your to-do list? Let us know in the comments!

Be sure to check back every Thursday when we’ll be sharing our #OperationOrganizedEntryway progress. Oh – and don’t forget to follow along on all the other ‘One Room’ Challenge projects here.