progress shot | front hall tile

We're almost done fixing my front hall mistake! The last time I showed you the front hall, I was debating between light and dark tile. Many of you liked the lighter colour. Even the sales woman at Satillio encouraged me to pick the light. But Mom, who I trust with all design decisions, and Aubrey - who is equally good at knowing what is right for our house - both loved the dark. And truthfully I thought it was the best choice too.

In our small house I felt that a lighter colour tile it would really break up the flow of the house. The darker makes it less obvious that we're ripped out hardwood to install tile. So...darker tile it was.  Here is Aubrey spacing it out prior to installing it later on that night. It hasn't yet been grouted, which we'll do in a little bit. I have to say, ripping out the hardwood and installing tile was a really great decision. It will be so much better come the winter when we have messy boots. Almost there!

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front hall tile

As I wrote about here, we made 1 major design mistake when we first renovated our house: We had hardwood installed all the way to the front door. What we really should have done was have installed tile by the front door - considering we live in Canada and we knew we were going to have kids. (Messy boots, dirt, mud, snow)

Because we were having a hardwood guy come to install new hardwood in the kitchen - we asked him to remove a section of the wood floor in the front hall. The photo shows the hardwood torn out and a new piece of wood installed to divide where the hardwood is, and where the new tile will eventually go.

My task is to find tile. I went to Saltillio Tile and was in heaven. Now only was their selection gorgeous, but their service was amazing. It walked out with samples, and a lot of helpful advice as to what tiles to pick. For us we're leaning towards the porcelain tiles because of easy maintenance and lower cost. With that out of the way, we have to narrow it down to a tile - light vs. dark.  Although the light is beautiful it really chops up the flooring. In a small house I think having continuous tones (especially on floors) makes it seem larger. So I think we're leaning towards the darker porcelain tile.

Just the daily design decisions going on!

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Front Hall Table

I bought this console table at HomeSense awhile ago and I left it like it came for awhile. I loved the casual feel of the wood.

But truthfully it always looked unfinished in our house, because nothing else had that wood tone. While doing an unrelated project with a dark gray/black paint, I took my paintbrush to the table. I wasn't too nervous about it because after living with it exposed like that for so long I was confident that a colour would be more suited to our house.

It kind of ties in with our stripes from our runner. It now grounds the entranceway. I need to find something for above it, not sure what though. Oh, and look at those dust bunnies collecting by the floor vent. Don't you love how photos pick up things you miss? *sigh*

UPDATE: The colour of the paint is CIL Forest Black DL50

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