I was amazed at what a difference a couple of coats of primer made. Just seeing the walls around my finished walk-in closet go from this mess…

…to this clean slate, ready for trim and wallpaper was so exciting to me. This feels like I’ve crossed the first big hurdle.

And once I saw those stripes disappear, and I saw the walls all white, I started to get really excited about my plans for these walls.

So that’s what I’ve decided to do on most of the walls, regardless of the size. On the walls flanking the walk-in closet, I’ll do one rectangle on each side.

Same goes for the rest of the walls in the foyer. (You can see where I ran out of primer and didn’t get a second coat on.) So these walls…

…will look like this, with one rectangle of picture frame molding per wall.

This is the area that I was the most concerned about because that door is definitely not centered on that wall. There’s nothing I can do about that, though, so I have to live with it.

So I’ll just continue the on with the one rectangle per wall plan, even though that leaves me with one really narrow rectangle to the left of the bedroom doors. I think it’ll look great once it’s all finished.

The bedroom walls are a little bit more challenging because I have some pretty wide areas in here. I wasn’t sure whether to keep those to the one rectangle per wall rule or divide those up. (I still need to do some priming with a brush. I only did the parts I could prime with a roller yesterday.)

Since most of this will be behind the bed, I decided to go with one rectangle on this wall as well.

And on this wall, I have yet another off-center door to work around.

But again, because I don’t want things getting too busy, so I’m going to keep these to one rectangle as well.

But the other two walls are where I got conflicted. I think that long span of wall to the right of the bathroom door is way too long for one rectangle.

In order to make the rectangles on that wall look somewhat similar, I think I might have to break that long wall up into three rectangles. That’s also the wall that will be the most visible since I don’t have any plans to put furniture against that wall. All of the other walls in the bedroom will have furniture and/or draperies in front of them.

UPDATE: Someone suggested I try two rectangles to the right of the door, and I think I like this better.

And finally, there’s this last wall. This is the one I’m still not sure about. (And that’s where I ran out of primer.)

I tried it two ways. Here’s what it woud look like with three rectangles…

And here’s what it would look like with two rectangles…

The two rectangles would make them more the size of the one on the wall to the right, and the three rectangles would make them more the size of the ones on the wall to the left (unless I go with two rectangles on the wall on the left). I’m not going to get hung up on this decision, though, because this wall will have furniture against it. But I do want it to look nice and look like I put some thought into it. My initial instinct is to go with two. That way, I don’t take a chance on it looking too busy, and I also don’t take a chance on having those outlets in the way of where the trim needs to go.

But here are some of the first things on the agenda. First, I need to deal with the ceiling light in the foyer. Before we started moving walls to square up the new bathroom (back when this hallway was much larger), this light was centered in this area. Now that walls have been moved, the light is in a very awkward position that makes no sense at all.

But if I center it in the smaller area, it’ll be jammed right up against the air return vent (is that what those are called?) for our HVAC. The return vent can’t be moved, so that means that the light needs to go away.

So I’m thinking about adding some wall sconces to the foyer instead of having a ceiling light. I could add two sconces flanking the full-length mirror I plan to put on this wall.

And then I could add more lighting on this wall to the left of the closet doorway where I plan to put an upholstered bench and artwork.

I need to think through that a bit more, but I really do want to get rid of the ceiling light altogether. And that needs to happen before I can start putting up grasscloth wallpaper.

Also, the door in the bedroom needs to be installed. This is the door I bought…

And it will replace the big window on the left — the window that’s on the front of the house.

I know this is a controversial decision, but it’s the decision that makes me feel peaceful. The door was supposed to be installed last week while I was still on break, and I was so excited about the idea of coming back from my break and showing y’all the installed door. But the door arrived one day too late for my contractor to hold my position in line. Literally, one day too late. Ugh! So he had to move on to go ahead and move on to another customer, and he’ll get back to me when that project is finished. He said it would be about two weeks. But obviously, that also needs to be done before I can finish up the grasscloth wallpaper in the bedroom.

Next item on the list that needs to be done immediately is moving the breaker box up about eight inches. It’s right in the way of the wainscoting that I’m planning, and I don’t want to move the wainscoting down any lower than 32 inches.

But this whole area has given me grief. I’ve been stressed about how to decorate around/over a metal breaker box in the bedroom, but over my break, I finally had clarity on how to handle it (I think). I have a plan for how to make it disappear and make this whole area make sense. So I’m not stressed about it anymore. But it does still need to be moved up about eight inches.

And then I need to get this attic access taken care of. Obviously, I don’t want to have this in our bedroom, but moving this will be quite a project.

I want the attic access to go in what is now the hallway bathroom, so getting this done will mean that I’ve actually arrived at the point that the hallway bathroom needs some significant changes. I will have to remove the corner cabinet and shelves just inside the bathroom to the right to make way for the new attic access.

I’ve been procrastinating on this because I love this bathroom. It was the second room I remodeled in our house, and I’m a little sentimental about it. But this will be a stepping stone towards bigger and better things. So as sad as it makes me, it’s time. The cabinet and shelves need to come out and the new attic access needs to go in so that I can continue on with my bigger plan and bigger vision.

First, I wrote a few weeks ago about the headboard that I plan to make for the bedroom. If you’re new around here, this is a mockup I did to show the general direction that I’ll be heading once I get started on the bedroom makeover.

And as a reminder, this is what the bedroom looks like right now.

The striped walls are left over from when this room was our home gym. I loved those stripes for a home gym, but that’s not at all the look I want in our bedroom, so those have to go. And they’ll be replaced with creamy white wainscoting and a rich teal grasscloth wallpaper.

Anyway, in that post about the headboard design options, my main issue was that the fabric I’ll be using isn’t wide enough to cover the width of a queen size headboard without having to seam the fabric together. But after a couple of people sent me pictures of upholstered headboards done by professional upholsterers that did have seams in them, but that were done very well with perfectly matched patterns, I’ve decided that I’m going to stick with the fully upholstered headboard option. And this is the design I’ve decided on.

That’s basically the same design I put in the mockup, minus that top curved section in the middle of the headboard. This more streamlined design fits me a bit better, I think. Y’all know how I tend towards squares and rectangles over circles, ovals, and lots of curves. This design gives me both, but without it being too heavy on the curves. Those two curved areas on the corners will give just the right amount of needed softness to the design.

But I’ve decided to go with a contrast welt around the side and top edges of the headboard, and it just so happens that I have several yards of a solid fabric that looks like it’ll work for that, pictured on the right side of the picture below.

Also, I don’t think I ever showed you the fabric that I chose for the recliner in the bedroom. I know I’ll disappoint some of you who were hoping that I’d go with the coral color, but I decided to go with the teal color called French, which was the lighter of the two teals I was considering. The darker one is called Sapphire.

So this is what the recliner will look like. It’s the Jude recliner from Interior Define (affiliate link), which happens to be 25% off right now.

But keep in mind that there will be plenty of opportunity to bring in accent colors with throws, a pillow, artwork on the wall behind it, etc. I think this is the right color to use to balance that corner of the room.

Now on to the closet island color decision. I realized pretty quickly, as I was reading through the comments, that I’m going to disappoint about half of you regardless of what decision I make. But the overwhelming favorite from everyone who commented was… (drum roll, please)…

…Billowy Breeze. About 60% of you said I should stick with Billowy Breeze. The other 40% of you were kind of all over the place, with suggestions ranging from one of the pinks, yellow, green, navy blue, etc. But a solid 60% of you said to stick with Billowy Breeze, so that’s what I’m going to do. Your points about there being so much more color in the room once I bring in my shoes, purses, and clothes, made a lot of sense.

And then when I brought in the plywood for the top of the island and saw just how big this finished piece is going to be in the room, I also made another decision. I’m going to paint the entire thing, including the top, in Billowy Breeze.

I am, after all, building this to look like a double-sided dresser, and most (but not all) dressers have a top that matches the body of the dresser. If the body is painted, the top is generally (but not always) painted the same color.

But once it’s done, and because it’s so big and sits right in the center of the room, this island is going to be so dominant that I don’t want such a large, white (or even marbled) countertop being the focus. So, it’ll be Billowy Breeze all around. It will be color-drenched, indeed!

And that means that I’ll also be painting the countertops over the washer and dryer with Billowy Breeze as well. I don’t want any countertops standing out and grabbing attention. But I will be making a little something to sit on the island countertop that will be painted in one of the pink colors. That way, that color can be brought to the center of the room, but it’ll just be an accent and not a monstrous island in a color that dominates the whole room.

I probably still have at least three days of building left on the island before I can even get to the priming and painting, but I’m glad to have that decision made! And I have a whole, uninterrupted workday ahead of me, and I have all of the supplies needed to finish this build already on hand. So hopefully, I won’t have to waste any part of today with more trips to Home Depot or Lowe’s. I hope to have a good deal of progress to share with you tomorrow!

Side note: I updated yesterday’s post this morning with the example of the rage bait Facebook post because I saw it yet again this morning when I opened up the app on my phone. I’ve seen it no fewer than ten times now on different pages, and it’s just one example of probably tens of thousands of posts like it.