Our brand new white kitchen and extension was a dream come true for us, after years of planning and saving and we're so pleased that we've been able to give both of the boys a nice sized room each following the extension and boys bedroom makeover that we did upstairs. Something else that has changed the way that we live at home and has made SUCH a difference to us, is our brand new porch and actually having our front door/entryway on the front of the house now and no longer on the side of the house.
Having a dedicated place to have our shoes, coats, hats, gloves, scarves, bags and everything else that we use out of the house, that is out of the way of the main house, is so good. I didn't really know what to expect when Adam was making up the designs for it, I sort of expected it to feel smaller than it is, so I was pleasantly surprised when I realised just how much we could fit out there. We bought a new shoe storage cabinet from IKEA that is brilliant as it hides away all of our shoes until we need them and then they pull down when we open the shelves.
On top of that, we have four storage baskets, two on top of the shoe cabinet and then two more on top of an IKEA LACK shelf that Adam cut down so that it could fit there. The baskets are great as they hold so much and are really durable. We've organised them so that we've got one for winter hats and gloves etc, one for the boys' wellies and small umbrellas. Another for summer hats and another for bicycle helmets and gloves. And then next to that, we've got space for my Hunter wellies and we keep bigger umbrellas inside of them.
On the other side of our porch we have all of our coats hanging up on big heavy hooks and then underneath those, we have a wooden blanket box on the floor that holds all of our bags. It also acts as a seating area to put your shoes on as it's so sturdy. I originally wanted a wicker box there, but I'm so glad that we chose the wooden one instead as it's so durable and I know that it will last, plus we get to use to it as a porch seat too (which is brilliant for the boys for getting their shoes on and off!).
Opposite our door in a convenient little spot we have our keys hanging up on a silver key rack so that we always know where they are. We also have our light switches for the porch, outside light and the kitchen, below the keys. And above that, we've added in a frame that was a Christmas gift from my brother and his fiancee, which says 'All guests must be approved by the cat'. A perfect addition for our home, I'm sure you'll agree! ;)
I'm so happy with our new front door - it's a composite door that we originally spotted on Pinterest and that we had wanted for ages. The door that we had previously was the one that was here when we moved in and it was ruined and a bit rotten - we'd actually painted it black to try to hide how bad it was. So now having a nice front door is amazing. We also love that we enter our home from the front now as the entryway for our home used to be on the side. I'm not sure why it makes such a difference to us, but there's just something about being able to open our door and see the whole street. Plus we also get a lot more sun on the front of our house (so the front doorstep was a good place to sit and soak in the sunrays during the summer whilst we had no garden).
Because our porch is where we used to have a huge window that brought lots of light into our kitchen, we used a glass-panelled internal door to let some of the light in from the glass panels down the sides of the front door. I think good natural lighting is really important in any home so I'm so glad that we considered the natural lighting whilst planning our renovations.
We also decided to add a long mirror to our porch as we were always wanting to walk back through the house to check our reflections after putting our coats and shoes on. The mirror we chose is from IKEA and was really inexpensive and it helps to fill that wall space as well as being practical.
Thank you for reading. Alex xo
