The story of the foyer.

This is the room I saw when I entered this house for the first time.  Paneling in a faux stone pattern covered the walls.  It was hideous and one of the first things to go.  I thought nothing could look worse, but I was wrong.  Under the paneling I found red flocked wallpaper!  (I have removed a lot of wallpaper since that day and never have I come across anything harder to remove than that paper.) It came off in the tinest of pieces over a very long period of time.  Once some layers were removed it was apparent that a fireplace had been a part of this room. 

This is another example of reversing the decision of the previous owner.  The original mantel had been removed and the firebox covered over. 

Obviously I chose to restore the fireplace. You can see a couple rows of new tile laid out on the floor in anticipation.  The firebox had to be rebuilt and a base poured for the tile.

A mantel with a few coats of paint was purchased, stripped and returned to it's full glory.  The floor in this room sloped slightly and had to be leveled by jacking it up from below before everything could be put into place.

Here it is nice and level.  A new decorating project was off and running.

Then came the stenciling project in blue and a rusty red.  I was shopping one day with my Mom when we found the mirror for $40. The ceiling medallion was a garage sale find and the window treatment I constructed myself. The logs were strictly for effect as this is a gas burning fireplace.

                                 
Same fireplace...different time....different mood.  I inherited the chairs from Grandma Riibe.  They needed a makeover so I attempted the reupholstery myself but burned out after doing one. So I enlisted a neighbor to do the second one.  Slight miscommunication resulted in the fabric running horizontally on one and vertically on the other.  It took me awhile to come to terms with that one.  I found the lovely swans and painted them pink.  The light fixture was gift from a neighbor who found it in her basement when she bought the house katty korner from mine.  With a little help on the frame, I constructed the lambriquin for the window.  All the painstaking stenciling disappeared under a new coat of paint.

Not to give up completely on stencilling, I took it to the ceiling instead.  The rope border that surrounds the room is actually wallpaper.

One day I stopped by a little antique/junk shop on Gravois owned by Tammy Turnipseed.  When I arrived she was inspecting a load in the back of a pickup truck as she prepared to buy items she thought she could resell.  This piece never made it inside her shop.  I bought it right off the sidewalk.

With a few adjustments I managed to make the new mantel look like it belonged.  Then began the job of making the rest of the room coordinate.

I have always been fond of red and finally got daring enough to put it on the walls. Named salsa, this color added warmth to the room which, I suppose, is what salsa is supposed to do.  It was a great background color for the large tapestry I discovered at Decorator;s Outlet.  I painted a console table I found in Kentucky in stripes and little by little the room took on a new look.  In December that year I threw a release party for Sheila's CD, " In A Moment Noticed."

Today the room has a calm, tranquil feel with an oriental bent.

The walls went back to white to refect more light.  The tapestry left via Craig's list to be replaced by 30 square mirrors.  Another change in light fixtures and some modifications to the console table helped transform this room one again.  Somewhere over the years the floor received a little transforming with  black paint and lots of painter's tape.