Entryway Overhaul Renovation

It has been a long time since my last post but there has also been a ton of work being completed on my house.  There are no less than about 20 projects going on that have to be all completed at the same time, but I wanted to share a project that is now almost completed.

Inside my home there is a large two story entryway.  The entryway has always seemed very plain and it really just needed to be renovated to give it a little more character.  To do this there was three parts; removing a closet, adding crown molding and LED lighting, and adding a new chandelier and can lights in the entry.  The railing will all be redone at a later point.  To start out, this is what the entry used to look like. 

The ceiling in this entryway is a little over 20 feet tall so my brother and I had to use some pretty long ladders to get to the ceiling.  The first step was to paint the top 12 inches of the wall the new wall color. This area will be lit up with the new lighting in behind the molding and once the molding is installed it would be hard to get a paint brush behind it to do the painting.  I then created the molding profile I wanted by using two pieces of trim.  The first piece was MDF stock that was 2 ¾  inch tall by ¾” wide.  Once this molding was pre-painted I nailed it to the walls so that I would have something to mount the crown molding to. The string in the picture is to help keep everything straight since many of the ceilings are wavy (you have to love 1970s construction).

The crown molding is extra wide at 5 ¼ inches tall and since I will not be mounting it to the ceiling, I needed to find a way to make mounting it easier.  What I did was cut a 1x2 in half with a 45 degree angle and attach this to the back of the crown molding with wood glue.  This gave me added material to mount to as well as helping to keep the correct angle on the crown molding.  Below you can see how I did this.  This made mounting the crown molding so much easier; especially when you are trying to line it up 20 feet in the air.

Here are the pictures once the molding is fully installed. 

As with all the walls in the house, I am skim coating them with drywall compound to re-texture the walls.  This entry took almost 15 gallons of drywall compound and turned out to be quite difficult up high.

The second part of this project was to remove a small closet and make the opening larger.  At a later point I will be installing high and low cabinets in the opening.  Below is the original closet after I had removed the door.

You will notice in the following pictures that there are openings on the side of the closet.  This part will be behind cabinets but was left open so I can access my home audio system, my whole home router, and the electrical for the LED lighting in the crown molding.  All walls were painted the same grey color as the rest of the house.  

Once all the plaster and drywall work had been completed and painted, it was time to work on electrical.  I decided that for my crown molding I was going to have both color changing LEDs as well as warm white LEDs so I could make the entry look different just by changing the color.  I used LED light strip that I bought off eBay.  For the 20 meters (about 66 feet) of lighting it cost about $30 with the controller and power supply for the color strips and an additional $15 for the warm white.  Since the molding was so high up in the air, I wanted to find a way to install the lighting easily and also find a way to attach the lighting flat.  Any height difference in the strip would be visible on the ceiling.  I did this by cutting foam core the length of each side of the wall and then attaching the light strips to the foam core with hot glue.  All I had to do was then place the foam core in the groove behind the molding.  Here you can see the strips attached to the foam core.

Once everything was all hooked up it looked really cool.  Here is a picture of the warm white strips on.

Here is a picture of the colored LEDs in action. These strips allow me to pick up to 256 different colors.

I also have the option to have the colors automatically change.  I probably will not ever use this function but it is cool to see what it can do.  Here is a video of the lights on the rotating function.

The last part of the project was to add ceiling lights and a new chandelier.  In the old entry there was just one chandelier that hung off center in the entry.  I decided to change this by first adding two can lights on either end of the entry.  I also used LED lights in the cans so that I will not need to get out a ladder for decades to change them. 

Then came the chandelier.  Since I would be centering the chandelier in the middle of the entry, it would no longer be easy to gain access for cleaning. The light fixture came from amazon since I couldn't find one I liked locally that didn't cost a fortune, and this one turned out to look great in the entry.

 I came up with a crazy idea, but one that worked out well.  On eBay I purchased a $10 winch with a 30 foot nylon strap on it.  I then mounted this in the attic and attached the ceiling electrical box that the fixture attaches to at the end of the strap.  After installing a modular plug on the end of the light to connect in the attic, I was ready to go.  Now I am able to raise and lower the light whenever I need for cleaning or in case something goes wrong with the LED bulbs I installed in the fixture. 

Although this project took a couple weekends with my brothers' help, it really made a huge difference with my entry.  I cannot wait until I re-do the railing to see what everything looks like put together.  I am probably a couple months off on the railing since it is not a current project, but I will post about it when I get to that point.  Well that is all for now but keep tuned for more frequent updates since my house is torn apart right now.  Here is a sneak peek of the state of the kitchen so you can see how much is still to come.