BEFORE & AFTER: Entryway Refresh Makeover With Hive Home - Thrift Diving

Hey guys what's up I'm Serena from thriftdiving.com and this is Kojo. Kojo and guess what we are doing today? We are making over the entry to our house because when you come home you want your house to look and feel exactly how you want it to look and feel and unfortunately we've kind of neglected our entryway. We even have curtains hanging up that belong to the people who lived here six years ago. I'm embarrassed to admit that but it's true. So what we're going to do today is we're going to make some new curtains for the windows we're going to put a new rug we're going to freshen up the paint and we're going to do a sensor right a motion sensor and we're going to do a light bulb we can actually control the light with our app on our cell phone you don't have to turn it on and off you just use your app so we have a lot of cool things going on and guess what we're going to try to get it done in one day do you think we can do that? I don't know. We're gonna try. Stick with us because we're gonna show you how we do this, but let's go ahead inside and I'll show you what the inside looks like before. Let's go, Kojo. You know, sometimes it's the most simple things that make all the difference. The walls were in bad shape. I mean, over the years, the kids have scraped, bumped, and bruised these walls, but all they needed was a fresh coat of paint, and that rug was way too small for the entry. It had gotten plenty dirty over the years and I couldn't wait to see how little changes could make this space feel cleaner and more pulled together. So in a recent blog post I was sharing with you how I'm converting our house into a smart home with these Hive devices that they had sent to me to try out. These are all part of the Welcome Home Starter Plan. You can get them for a low subscription monthly rate. Be sure to check out my post linked below in order to get more information but I'm talking about taking your light bulbs and being able to control them as well as your motion sensor with an app on your cell phone which is amazing so you can even install it vertical horizontal and it's going to tell you whenever there's motion in your house now one thing we're not going to be installing in this video but it's part of the welcome home package is the hive thermostat set your temperature how you want it when you want it come home to the house that's perfect so here's how you control it the app is downloadable it's free i can go to the lights that i want to control for example in my computer room i can turn the lights on i can turn them off and i can actually dim it to where i want it to be now in my computer room that's actually the room next to my entry so that is where we're going to schedule the lights and that way when we come home in the evening or you know on the weekends whenever we can set our times for whatever we want and the house looks exactly how we want it to look when we come home just save it and then we're done so before we could install our hive devices we needed to clear everything out because the entry just needed to be made over so thankfully kojo was a little helper at first and then it was all me but we went ahead and just removed as much stuff as possible and then once everything was cleared we were able to clean the walls get all the dust off but then we had a problem so you guys are not going to believe this my paint just crashed to the ground and now not only do I have a huge mess in my driveway but now I've got to go back to the store and get more paint. Well that was not fun but let me tell you it made for a really great Instagram photo. So I went back to the store I got another gallon of paint put on one coat and I tell you it looked amazing. And remember those nasty curtains that I never took down from the previous owners? Well they needed to go. So for this mini refresh makeover I just quickly sewed my own which was pretty simple. I didn't want to have to buy all new hardware so I just spray painted the existing hardware black and they look great. I found the entry table at a thrift store of course but I didn't like the brown so I painted it a pretty poppy color and I think it looks really good with the sea salt. And I built this easy DIY dry erase board because when my family's coming home and leaving I want a place where we can leave important messages for each other too. And the most dramatic part was the new rug. I absolutely love the way it made the room just feel cleaner and fresher and it was the appropriate size. So we are just about done with this makeover and I have to admit I absolutely love this and I can't believe with just a little bit of paint, a new rug, we have a pop of color and a new message board and it looks amazing. It feels good when I walk into this space but we still have two more things to do. We're going to put some new bulbs, some new Hive active light bulbs in some of the other lights that we have here to welcome us home, and we're going to try to install a motion sensor from Hive. So let's go ahead and get that done, and then we are completely finished. Sorry, sweetie. You know, it's crazy to think that you can take a light bulb, screw it in, and have it talk to a smart device on your phone, but it's really that simple. So Hive had sent me these smart active light bulbs, and it's really easy to set up. You can see here that just with a tap of the screen, I can turn the light on and off, and with another swipe, I can adjust the brightness too. And the last thing to do for this makeover was to install the motion detector. With double-sided tape or Velcro, you want to place it about six to ten feet from the ground in an area where you'd want to monitor activity. Because if it detects motion, guess what it's going to do? It's going to alert you on your cell phone. How cool is that? So before I show you the final before and after, I want to invite you to hang out with me and Hive on saturday august 5th we're going to be on the plaza at tyson's corner mall in virginia and we're going to be demoing a lot of these smart devices for your home so i can't wait to see you on august 5th so it's a wrap we are completely done with this makeover and i'm excited did you like the makeover what do you think surprisingly my entire family loves it and i'll admit i used to be really embarrassed when visitors came by because of how the entryway looked but now it's cleaner it's brighter and it feels more spacious. And now when my family comes home, we can remotely turn those lights on and welcome us home to a nice, bright, pretty entryway and I absolutely love it. And if you've got any questions about the colors, the tools, the products that I talked about in this video, be sure to check it out in the description and check out hivehome.com for more information about Hive. I'll see you next project.