Our entry table from the old house naturally ended up next to the front door in the new house as well. It’s been there since day one without much thought — until recently.
We moved it just for fun and discovered we liked the new location better. It wasn’t a dramatic relocation — the table just drifted a bit down the hallway.
The spot suits it better for a few reasons:
- The table moved from an unfinished, rough-looking area into a painted, more polished section of the hallway.
- We kept picturing the previous owners’ setup (they had a console in that spot as well), which made the new placement feel familiar and fitting.
- It was too small to balance the built-ins across from it in the future dining room, so pulling it away from the front door helped the overall proportion.
The only question was how to center the table on the wall. In the photo above you can see it sits close to one doorframe and leaves more space on the other side.
We experimented with several positions — perfectly centered, slightly shifted, flush left — and chose an off-center placement because it looks best from the kitchen, which is where we’ll view it most often. From that angle it reads as centered through the kitchen doorway. (Warning: ugly paneling alert.)
Since it’s off-center now, we can’t recreate the exact symmetrical frame arrangement we had in our first house — that would look lopsided here. But we don’t want a duplicate of the old place anyway, so we’ve come up with a new plan for the wall above the table.
We’re thinking of filling the wall with white frames in mixed sizes and shapes for a curated, collected-over-time feel. Filling much of the wall from near the console up toward the ceiling will help address the empty space beside the table while creating a dense gallery for family photos, kids’ artwork, old maps, favorite little keepsakes, and anything else we want framed. The arrangement will be packed enough that it will almost read like wallpaper.
We’re drawing inspiration from other dense gallery walls, but ours will lean more DIY-friendly — thrift finds, Etsy pieces, calendar images, and homemade art rather than expensive originals. In other words: champagne taste on a root-beer budget. Luckily we already have a bunch of white frames waiting to be hung — you can see them propped up in the guest room.
As for the spot near the front door where the table originally lived, we’re watching Craigslist for a larger, more proportionate cabinet or buffet to anchor that area. We’ll share updates when we find the right piece.
P.S. If you’re not seeing our posts on Facebook, the site may be filtering your feed. Scroll to the bottom of your Facebook home page, click “Edit Options,” and choose “Show Posts from All Friends and Family” so you don’t miss updates.