Past project: The foyer

Not so plain any more. This foyer used to have very basic moldings. Not any more.
Sorry, no before photos.

When we moved to our home more than twenty years ago, one of the things I started doing was upgrading it's architectural details. While nice, our home was the typical spec. house – nice enough to appeal to many people, but not much more. We had floor to ceiling windows that let in a lot of light. The house had two sets of large bay windows. Every door in the house was a six panel door made of real, solid wood. And the house came with a vaulted ceiling in the foyer.

One summer, we visited the Biltmore House in Ashville, North Carolina. I won’t spend any time talking about this home except to say the extensive architectural detailing and old world charm had a huge impact on me. I wondered, “How could I work some of that detailing into my simple home?” Now, I want to say that I have made big improvements to the look of my home, but it is nothing like the magnificent Biltmore House.

I decided to start a project designed to upgrade our foyer. The foyer is the first impression of the inside of a home, and I thought this was an important place to start. What ensued was a lengthy project of tearing out sheet rock, adding panels, rebuilding the banister and railing system and adding natural light to our foyer

Inspiration
While the Biltmore House was the big picture inspiration for this project, I found two photos that gave me specific inspiration for the changes made to our foyer. The first photo is from the July, 1997 issue of Architectural Digest magazine.

Historic boxed-in. The stairs shown are what a flooring guy would call boxed stairs.
I love the look of this early American home.

Our carpeted stairs were originally the type where the balusters ran all the way to the stair tread and the carpet would wrap around the baluster; on to the edge of the tread and then attached to the sheet rock in an upholstered fashion. While I don't mind carpet on stairs, I hated the look of the wrap around, upholstered carpet.

Crisp and classic. The finished project provides many shadow lines to highlight
all the various moldings in the room.

The completed foyer is a light filled room that is now a nice entrance to our home (vs. the very simple one it replaced). The original door was a solid one without any glass which meant that our foyer was mostly dark. Except for the two newel posts, all the stair parts are new. The balusters were replaced since several of the original ones were upside down. Plus, the original balusters were particularly skinny. I wanted more beefy ones like in the AD photo. The new oak handrail replaced a poorly stained pine one. I sawed off the top of the newel posts and replaced them with the oak acorn shown. The floor is a oak herringbone pattern which replaced an uninspiring builder grade parquet. I like the herringbone pattern which is what you would see in the Biltmore House.

The other photo
The second photo that I found interesting actually was a whole magazine article that appeared in the November, 1996 issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine. I think you can get the gist of the construction process of the panel system featured in the article from the photo below. This is basically how I did the panels in my foyer. The photo is clickable for a larger view.

Nice work. Jim Chestnut who wrote the article does beautiful work. This article was
invaluable in helping me complete my task.

In addition to the panels, I constructed simulated columns around the doorway from our foyer into our living room. I followed the example shown in Jim Chestnut's article and improvised some of it - see photo below.

Tough miters. In this photo the corners of the panels meet at a pretty tight angle. I made a special jig for my table saw to cut these. Beautiful Mohawk DuPont Sorona carpet on the stairs - good stuff (I work for Mohawk).

More trim. I took the opportunity to add detailing to the entrance of our living room.

In all this project went on for about three years! This is the single greatest improvement I have made to my home. There were plenty of times when we had guests in our home and they had to look at a half destroyed foyer. And there were many times when my wife had to trust that I knew what I was doing. During this process I acquired some new power tools and made a few jigs to help me make some complex (for me) cuts. After I started the project, the lumber I was using was discontinued, so I had to come up with a work around for this. This was a project that seemed like it would never end, but in the end, it was well worth it.

See a related project; the construction of my living room coffered ceiling by clicking here.

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My top three projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. My foyer project.