functional entryway updates, cozy corner setup, surprising my dad! | Homebody Diaries

So this is a living room update that I have been putting off for quite a while now because if you guys are renters like me, you know that drilling or mounting things onto your wall is probably one of the most terrifying things of all time just because A, I'm worried about not getting my deposit back and B, I feel like in general, I'm just not really good at planning and making sure that I'm drilling into the wall where I actually should be drilling. But I got my girlfriend with me here today so she's gonna help me out a little bit with the more careful planning. And let me show you exactly what we're going to be doing. So as you guys probably just saw, there are two things here that we will be mounting onto the wall. The first one being, what up? As you can see, this chrome wall-mounted table, not table lamp, just a wall lamp. And then the second one, not sure if you can tell, is actually a wall-mounted shelf. The plan is to put this shelf right above the Eames lounge chair. So this very large blank wall, as you can see, would be a perfect spot for it. And then this chrome lamp is going to be replacing this lamp, mounting that lamp right about here and then freeing up this table space I think will also be really great. Let's do it. Okay, that took a little bit longer than I thought it was going to. But as you can see, we now have the wall shelf up and mounted onto the wall. We had a lot of trouble locating the beams on this wall since we wanted to obviously screw it into solid beams as opposed to just drywall. And we ended up finding a pretty cool tip, which might come helpful for any of you guys out there who are also trying to mount stuff on the wall. Obviously you can use a beam finder to sort of try to find beams anywhere, but as you can see, it's not super consistent. I'm not sure if this is not a good one, but we ended up finding out is drywall has to actually be screwed into the beams that are supporting this wall. And so if you use a really strong magnet like this, you can actually use the magnet to find the beams. Like right here, you can see, the magnet will actually stick to the screw that's screwed into the beam. I now know that above and below this, there has to be a beam here because there's a screw right there. Maybe I'm the only one who didn't know about that, but I thought it was pretty cool and wanted to share with you guys. And now that that shelf is out of the way and looking very nice, the next step here is mounting this lamp. I'm thinking of putting it around the same height as a table lamp would be sitting on top of this to make it not too tall so that the light shines like directly into your eyes when you're sitting here. And so I think I'm probably gonna mount it at around say like this height. I think that looks pretty good. So let's do that now. Okay, so here's what everything looks like all set up. As you can see up top, there is this wall shelf now. And then right below that, you can see I have the wall-mounted chrome lamp, which you can see my reflection. What up? This also turned out really well. And as you can see, what it allowed us to do is basically free up a lot more space on the side table over here. So now you can put your drink down, you can put some books down. I can fit a plant on there. And I think just overall this entire corner just looks so much more put together compared to before. I guess I'll kind of call these updates the first part in a string of living room updates, which are coming very soon. As you guys probably know, we've had this layout here with this couch here and the Togo couch over there for quite a while now. And on top of just getting kind of bored of it and wanting to switch things up, I really did never like how this sofa is sort of covering the stairs over there and disrupts the overall flow of the room a little bit. So definitely look forward to some pretty exciting living room updates coming soon. So something I have an absolute love-hate relationship with in our home is this front entryway area. I do really love a lot of the material choices, like this bright yellow slatted door and also the sort of yellow and gray speckled terrazzo tiles on the floor. But aesthetics aside, this is actually an extremely unfunctional entryway. And the reason for that is the only storage in this entire area is actually this built-in sort of console, which has two pretty small drawers under it. There is zero closet space. There's no hanger space. There's pretty much no space to put anything. You might remember that a while back when we first moved in, I did actually manage to find this low locker that perfectly fit under the console table and luckily does help us manage all of our shoes. But as you can see on top, because we have no closet or hanger space, it pretty much just always looks a little bit messy and there's always kind of stuff in bags and hats thrown everywhere. And so today I'm finally going to make some entryway updates to add some hanger space onto this wall. And in general, just make the area a little bit more functional after living here for almost a year now and realizing that this is a problem. So let's do that. Okay, so the first thing I'm going to be adding to the entryway is this Eames Hang It All from Herman Miller. As you can see, it's in this really playful and colorful configuration that I think is going to fill up this wall space really, really nicely. And then obviously give us a place to hang all of our sort of daily essentials like bags and hats and stuff. I've already drilled the drywall anchors into the wall. So I'm just going to hang this up right now real quick. Okay, that was pretty easy and super happy with how this is already looking. So now I finally have space to put all these bags and hats and stuff that are on the console table onto this hanger. This obviously doesn't give us the space that a actual closet would give us, but at the very least, it does let us hang up the things that we use on a daily or weekly basis, like these bags or this hat, which you guys probably always see me wearing. There still is a lot of extra space under. So I think I'm going to add in this Ikea bench under the hangers. And I think this should fit pretty well under here. I think that's pretty good. So now I can sort of just sit down on this bench right here and then reach across, grab some shoes to put on or take off. Also very functional. And then I think the last thing I'm going to add, let me move real close so you guys can see, is a doormat. Because as I've quickly found out this winter, it does rain a lot here. And so we've had to clean and wipe this area so much throughout the month. So I'm going to add in this very fun and colorful doormat, which I just got. Which again, I think should go really well with the new wall hanger, as well as this yellow door. I got one that's big enough to really fill up this entire front door space. Cause I really hate it when a doormat is too small and then you end up walking on the area anyways, which just defeats the purpose of having a doormat. So I definitely got one that is big enough for this space. And this one right here is a little bit more of an indoor rug. So it's kind of got this soft feel to it. But I did also just in case pick up this one right here, which as you can see is a lot more rugged and sort of meant for the outdoors. So I'm also going to add in this rug outside of the door to really get any like big pieces of dirt and stuff off before you get into the door. Going to close the door here cause there have been a crazy amount of mosquitoes recently. And if you guys are interested on where these doormats are from, I'll be sure to leave a link in the description for these. It took me a while to find doormats that I really liked just because most of them I feel like look super generic, but I found these very cool design-esque ones from a Nordic brand called Haymat. So definitely check those out too. Okay, here's how everything looks. We have the lovely doormat right there. We have the entryway coat hanger, and then we have the bench under there. And then of course we have the other doormat outside. Definitely some big thumbs up. I feel like this area is just way more functional now. And I also just really love how it looks. I love it.