Amazing Grays: Entryway Staircase and Vintage Telephone Table

I love "statement" entryways. I've had a few images bookmarked for a long time now and combined elements from each to create an artsy, bold entryway for our house. As a reminder, here's a before pic of our entryway taken when the previous owner still lived there:

I picked up this vintage telephone table, also known as a "gossip bench" at a little thrift store in West Memphis called Sacks Thrift Avenue for $30. It was thickly painted with a green and white crackle paint and was an absolute nightmare to sand off. It was one of those projects where I'm cussing myself in my head for taking it on.

See? He's giving me the "I can't Ba-LIEVE you brought this thing home" look.

But it always pays off when I see it through to the finish, and I LOVE how this turned out.

Before:

After:

I knew I wanted it red as soon as I saw it. I painted it red with a can of paint left by the previous owner of our house, sanded areas to distress, then coated those areas lightly with a black stain and glossed it over with polyurethane. I hate that the camera could never capture the true wall color. It's a deeper teal than it looks in the pics.

A close up of the distressing:

Lastly, the cushion was recovered with solid black fabric, that will probably be changed out frequently based on my mood.

I'll stack books underneath and there's a little clipboard to leave notes on top. I bought it at my favorite salvation army store back in conway. It was brass and, well, just plain fugly.

Before:

But it was $.5o and I knew it would be precious. All it took was a coat of oil rubbed bronze spray paint.

After:

The genie-inspired lamp was another salvation army find, and I actually think I found it on that same trip. It was also brassy and cost only $4.00. I spray painted it with silver spray paint and put a temporary white shade on, until I can find a cute patterned one.

I took a before pic but it was so long ago that I can't find where it's saved...sorry!

In a red frame I found lying around, I placed an 8x10 photo Sean and I took the day we got engaged. I found the red painted wood at a local flea market for $.50 and on it, wrote a scripture from Song of Solomon with the date we got engaged in roman numerals.

Before: