Our entryway used be a tight, awkward little hallway,

…with useless pony walls on each side. They just visually tightened an already small space.

The pony walls went to the curb within a month of moving in – a small task that made Jamie a little nervous. Especially when I bought a crowbar and a sledge hammer in front of him at Home Depot. If I recall, his exact words were,

“Why did we buy this house if we have to change it?”

I know, that was 10 years ago. He’s singing a much different tune these days.

In fact, I came home from work one day to find that he had already removed the pony walls… by himself.

But it took us another 9+ years to remove the odd header that hovered over those little walls. At one time, there were decorative “cage-like” railings that sat upon said walls and stretched up to the header. If you’ve ever watched HGTV’s House Hunters you know what I’m talking about. It was an attempt to make a small house look like she had an actual formal entryway. You know, without closing it off too much.

1972 solution = bars. In case you’re wondering, a cage is never the solution…

Anyhoo, there that header has sat – or hung – over our heads for 10 years. With standard 8 foot ceilings, we need all the visual clearance we can get. After making sure it wasn’t load bearing  (I learned that phrase from HGTV too) I set about ripping it down.

Remember, I still had that crowbar and sledge hammer….

And I used them to do this…

Stripped off all the drywall to see what we’re working with.

Sure, we like “industrial”, but this is just a little too rustic.

Over the course of a few days, Jamie will tell you it took several weeks, I gently removed the massive boards and patched the four inch wide hole with smaller boards, a run of drywall, and then a layer of drywall mud.

Then I sanded,

Followed by more mud, and more sanding,

And eventually even more mud, and, you guessed it, even more sanding……

When I was fully satisfied with the texture, I wrapped grocery bags around the can lights and gave the whole ceiling several coats of ceiling paint white.

Have I mentioned that you should routinely paint your ceilings? Because you should.

First thing.

It makes a tremendous difference reflecting light in an old house. (Especially an old house that was built when smoking was popular.)

Eventually we could hardly tell that there had ever been a header there at all.

If you didn’t know to look for it… you’d never know what used to be there.

I know, I’m impressed too.

Did a fairly decent job of matching the texture on the walls too.

Notice that I took this time to add crown molding in this room too. Used the same technique as in the master bedroom. I can’t stress enough how much it cleans the edges of the room. Do it!

On to our next project.

Lord knows we have time…..