top of page
info199507

AND SO THE JOURNEY BEGINS…Part 11


Welcome back! Today we’re going to take you on the journey of the Entranceway of the J.W. Houston House. This room will be our little lobby of course. As usual, we will start with what it looked like to where it is going. And so, let’s begin this part of the journey.

When we walked through the front door, the first thing we noticed was the old, beautiful brass and crystal chandelier and the wooden floors. The front door has a clear “stain glass” style window and transom window above the door. Standing with your back to the front door, there is a door to a room on the right, which is now the Bazaar (retail) area, and door to a room on the left, which is now Café Eclipse, a small door under the staircase, of course the staircase, and a doorway straight ahead, which leads to the kitchen area, back hallway, storage room, salon room, aesthetics room, bathroom, and back entrance. And as you can see, some construction material was left in the entrance as well.

The first thing we did was clean up the construction materials, which showed us what we were working with. The walls were painted a pale yellow. The trim, crown molding, ceiling, and doors were painted white. The banister’s uprights and the mule post were painted white with the handrail and bottom were a cherry-ish colored wood. The floors were the original flooring of the home.

We took the doors off that go to the two rooms on either side of the entrance way. We painted the walls with Valspar 4000 Eggshell Finish Paint in Clay Angel. The trim, crown molding, the small door under the staircase, and the uprights of the banister are painted with Valspar 4000 Semi-Gloss Finish in White and for the handrailing and bottom piece of the banister we used Valspar 4000 Semi-Gloss Finish Paint in Tricorn Black. We painted the door knob on the small door with Rust-Oleum Universal Satin Black Spray Paint & Primer in One. The flooring will remain untouched with the exception of us mopping, steam cleaning, and using Howard Feed-N-Wax Beeswax & Orange Oil Wood Polish & Conditioner. As for the front door, we replaced the door handle and the dead bolt and used Howard Feed-N-Wax Beeswax & Orange Oil Wood Polish & Conditioner to bring it back to life. We are talking about doing something to the window in the door, and if we decide to do what we are thinking, we will leave that as a surprise.

What about the ceiling, you may ask. We decided that we wanted a mural on this ceiling. No, we aren’t artist like that. We could only wish. So, without further ado and for those of you that don’t know this person, we would like to introduce a brilliant local artist, Jason Colbert. Jason is a very talented artist that we feel that everybody should know. He not only paints murals, portraits as well. Jason wants everyone to know, and this is a direct quote from him, “Don’t be discouraged about where you start, but be inspired by where you can go.” You can check out his work at https://www.facebook.com/LifeInColorsStudi0 and we suggest you do so.

Jason has turned the white ceiling into a midnight sky with stars starting at the back of the room leading to a lighter cloudy sky towards the front door and towards Café Eclipse. He worked on the ceiling in installments and we got to spend a little bit of time watching his creation in amazement. We could write more about the mural, but we don’t think we ever do it justice. So, just look at the pictures below and you can always go to his Facebook and watch the reels of him working on the mural. But please don’t stop at just the reels about our mural, take a good look at his work! Also, we think that the pictures do not do it justice either and we can’t wait for the public to come and see this beautiful mural!

After the mural was complete, we decided that the Allen + Roth White Composite Ceiling Medallion did not need to remain white. It just did not look right next to this beautiful mural. So, we painted it using Valspar 4000 Semi-Gloss Finish Paint in Tricorn Black. We took off the crystals to give them a good cleaning and we cleaned up the brass. We replaced all the using Great Value 5.5W LED daylight Decorative Lightbulbs. We have the chandelier back together however; we haven’t taken a picture of that yet.

We are having the front desk built. As you can see below, it has been started. There has been more done to the desk than this, but we do not have a picture to show you. Our photography for the blog has been lack as of late. The reason? Well, we are busy trying to get things complete so that we can give everyone a date for our Grand Opening.

On a little side note, we have done more to this wonderful old house than what has been shown in these blogs. We realized that we are way behind on our writings. So, with that being said…we plan on post part 12 of the blog later this week.

We thank you for taking the time to follow our journey. If you would like to help you can contact us in the ways listed below. Thank you, Collierville, our friends, our family, and our employees for your time, support, and your love! All of our information is below if you would like to follow, volunteer, or donate to the preservation of the J.W. Houston House (“the Manor”).




175 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page