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carly_friesen25

Our solution to tiny back entry design dilemma

Carly F
5 years ago
Our 1960 bungalow has a back entry landing of only 39 inches by 68 inches. A step up through a door takes you to the kitchen while straight ahead are the stairs that take you to the unfinished basement. The only light in this area was a bulb attached just above the door frame, whose switch happened to be on the same circuit as the outdoor entry light. The floor is linoleum and, while we did the rest of the main floor in a lovely faux-wood laminate, the landing is too small for the laminate to stay in place. We debated building a mudroom addition, but there are more design issues to deal with outside, plus we really can't afford that right now. We recently had our first child and plan to have two more, so this entry needs to be highly functional! Here is what we did:

1. Swapped the lightbulb for a wall sconce that works on a sensor. This enables us to have the outdoor light on a sensor, and is pretty handy to have inside, as the light comes on when we need it and shuts off after a few minutes (or however long we set it for). We didn't want to open up the wall and rewire everything, so this was a good solution.

2. We painted the linoleum and found a 3'x5' entry rug (L. L. Bean) to fit the space. Entry rugs this size are difficult to find, at least in Canada, but I love it. I also replaced the stair nosing, as the old one was looking pretty beat up.

3. We created a "shoe wall" by attaching primed MDF from the floor to the top of the door frame, then adding hooks where we can hang shoes of varying sizes. We'd had the shoe organizer from before when we had tried using it over the kitchen door and hated it (it was awkward and always swung out a bit with opening and closing the door), and I wanted to make use of the space behind the back entry door, so we decided to nail it in place and use it for storing toques, gloves, scarves, etc.

4. We replaced the back door (used to be just plain wood) with a steel door with a small window at the top. Considering how dark this entry is, I regret not getting a bigger window and simply adding privacy glass.

We're considering adding a storm door as well, as we're finding the area smells quite heavily of shoes, haha, and this would at least let a breeze in. We also need to add a baby gate at the top of the stairs with the gate able to swing either way.

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