Come On In! (Our Entryway)

It was imperative, in my mind, to have a statement piece in our entryway.  This is what I was working with...a blank canvas:

I immediately knew what I wanted to do.  I had seen a design with bamboo and rocks on HGTV and had fallen in love, so I looked it up on their website.

Along with a focal wall, I had four other walls to deal with.  My other main concerns...covering the small windows on either side of the door with something other than blinds, finding a place for my husband to sit and take off his dirty work boots, and hanging a leash/coat rack.

Before making my bamboo focal point, I had to paint.  I had picked out a burnt orange color of one of my t-shirts (bottom right) and went to the paint store to get a custom color...and here is what happened:

AHHH it was UT Volunteer ORANGE!  Or at least that's the way I felt!  I was anything but in love with the color.  So...I mixed some tan we had from painting our living room in with it and decided to rag roll the wall with my mixture:

I think it turned out pretty nicely. But I still had work to do!

And after going back to the store (I always buy paint from the same place - PG Porter) they asked about my custom color and I told them I didn't like it at all and ended up rag rolling over it, they gave me a coupon to use to get my next can of paint Free!

As for my bamboo creation...I was off to Hobby Lobby. I purchased my bamboo for about $2 each (only buy when they have the item on 50% off). I got 12! Then I decided I wanted more depth and bought some smaller cane reeds and zebra reeds (4 total bundles w/ about 15 reeds) for $3 each...making my total around $36!!! And I had extra and used them in vases we already had!

When I got home though, my husband informed me he couldn't easily make me the beautiful base/bamboo holder like the one in the picture above since we didn't have an electric circular saw and we could wait until we had one, but I knew that would be MONTHS and I am impatient sometimes. That was in July...we got the saw finally in December.  So I spent about $24 on two planters...but we had gift cards :)

I cut my bamboo down to size using a HAND saw...took a little while.  I wanted to put a round mirror in the middle of the wall and shape the bamboo around the mirror.  I had my husband bring me small rock from some mixtures they use at work (he's in the concrete industry).  I used that along with a combination of crumpled newspaper to steady my bamboo in my planters.  Then I placed the larger rocks on top:
  

The front windows were bothering me (I didn't like that people could see straight into the house).  I purchased some vinyl wall covering for a total of about $15 with shipping.  The install was simple, clean the window, cut your vinyl to size, put a little water on the window, place the vinyl in the window and squeegee the excess water.  (Not gonna lie, I didn't do this, my dad's girlfriend did while Dad and I painted the office!)

I think it turned out GREAT!

I already had the chair (which my husband promises to replace w/ a wood bench), the vases holding the rest of the bamboo were a wedding gift, and we already had the coat/dog leash holder, and our splurge purchase was the black round mirror from Hobby Lobby for about $50. And lastly, I recently swapped the extra tan carpet patch we were using in front of the door for a clearance $10 rug from Target!  Making my total out of pocket cost was around $110. 

It's a little more cash than what I would have wanted to spend, but doing the bamboo and painting myself made me feel creative :)