At the beginning of every year, I make a list of home goals for that year. Since I’ve started doing that several years ago, I’ve never once gotten through the whole list during the year. I always put way too much on the list knowing that it’s impossible for me to get through the whole thing.

But I like to use the list as kind of a general guide to keep me somewhat focused. It’s more like a buffet where I know I won’t eat every single thing on the buffet, but what I do eat has to come from the buffet. That’s the general idea, at least. There have been a couple of years where I’ve detoured quite a bit from that initial list, but for the most part, that’s how I view my list of home goals.

The one thing I know for sure won’t happen this year is tearing down the sunroom. At the beginning of the year, it looked like this…

Our washer and dryer were still in there. And while those have now been moved to their new, permanent home in the walk-in closet, the hot water heater remains. While I know where the new hot water heater will go (in the current guest bathroom that will soon be turned into a storage room), I’m still completely undecided on what kind of hot water heater I want to get. So until I make that decision and actually get the hot water heater moved out of the sunroom, the sunroom has to stay.

I also have a lot of stuff stored in this sunroom that needs to be moved out, so with less than three months left in the year, I can say pretty confidently that tearing down the sunroom will have to wait until next year. That’s disappointing, but at least I can see a light at the end of the tunnel on this.

I got quite a bit done on my workshop at the beginning of the year. It started off the year looking like this…

And today, it looks like this…

The four items still on the list for the exterior are to (1) mark off a planting bed around the building and add mulch, (2) do something to make the garage door look interesting, (3) build a pergola above the garage door, and (4) add exterior lights. I know for sure I won’t get the pergola done this year, or if I even still want a pergola above the garage door. But now that the weather is getting cooler outside, I could easily take a day and the those other three things done in a day, especially if I want or need a break from working on the bedroom. I already have the lights for the exterior. They’ve been sitting in the studio for months now. I just need to find an hour or so to get them up. Of course, they won’t have electricity yet, but at least they’d look pretty!

I had also put on my list all of the inside projects for my workshop. Obviously, those will have to wait until next year as well. As soon as I get the bedroom done, and then do a quick makeover on the studio bathroom and get the current guest bathroom turned into a storage closet, the workshop will be my next big project.

Obviously, the biggest items on my list for the year were the different areas of our bedroom suite. I tackled my closet first, and it’s the only area so far that is 100% finished. I still can’t believe that it started off looking like this at the beginning of the year…

And other than the flooring installation, which I hired out, I turned that room into this…

The only thing on my original list that I ended up not doing was building cabinets or shelves above the washer and dryer. And so far, it has worked out just fine not having additional storage there.

The foyer has come a long way from what it was at the beginning of the year. (Sorry, I don’t have a new picture since I painted the bedroom and added trim. I’ll work on getting new pictures this weekend.)

My original list for this area looked like this, but there have been a few changes to the original plan:

1. Install hardwood flooring, Done! See it here.
2. Sand the hardwood flooring,
3. Stain and seal hardwood flooring, See it here.
4. Finish the French doors to bedroom suite,
5. Install crown molding, Done!
6. Paint the walls, Done!
7. Paint or the gold leaf full-length mirror I found a mirror to purchase instead,
8. Build an upholstered storage bench I’m going to reupholster a bench I alread have,
9. Create a new scuttle hole to the attic This will go in the storage room,
10. Create a new scuttle hole to the crawl space This will go in the storage room,
11. Make or buy artwork I’m going to use what I have.

And then I need to add these items to that list:

12. Hang the grasscloth wallpaper,
13. Wire sconces to flank the full-length mirror,
14. Install the new ceiling light,
15. Patch the hole for the old ceiling light.

I think that’s it for the foyer.

And then there’s the bedroom. It has also come a long way since the beginning of the year. Again, I’ll have new pictures by the end of this weekend with all of the trim finished.

And here’s what my original list looked like for the bedroom:

1. Install hardwood flooring, Done! See it here.
2. Sand the hardwood flooring, Done!
3. Stain and seal hardwood flooring, Done! See it here.
4. Close up scuttle hole in ceiling It’s staying, but I do need to trim it out.
5. Paint ceiling, Done!
6. Repair and prime walls, Done!
7. Install wainscoting, (Almost finished! Still working on wood fill, sanding, and caulking.)
8. Install crown molding, Done!
9. Hang grasscloth wallpaper,
10. Install wall and ceiling trim in the bedroom entrance, Done! But my plan changed from my original plan at the beginning of the year, so there’s no ceiling trim.
11. Make an upholstered headboard,
12. Build a pretty bed frame to cover the not-so-pretty frame of our adjustable bed,
13. Build two bedside tables I bought bedside tables instead.
14. Sew velvet curtains,
15. Make or find artwork,
16. Create a reading corner (which may include reupholstering a chair), I bought a chair instead, which should be delivered in the next couple of weeks.
17. Accessorize to finish.

And the one thing I left off of that original list was:

18. Refinish the dresser.

UPDATE: I forgot one last category on my 2025 home goals list! I had some house exterior projects on that list as well.

I think this is where I got a little overly ambitious. My list included the following:

1. Redo (and finish!) the skirting on the front porch,
2. Re-install the shutters that came down,
3. Re-install the front porch tape lights that fell down,
4. Mark off planting beds and add borders and mulch,
5. Add lighting to driveway and sidewalk,
6. Build the steps to the side studio door.

Obviously, I’m not going to get any of that big stuff done, like the finishing the skirting on the porch, marking off planting beds and adding mulch, adding lights to the driveway and sidewalk, or building the steps to the studio door. Those will have to wait…again. But I do hope to fix the shutter that fell and fix the tape lights that fell down on the front porch. In addition, I also hope to get the new exterior door in the bedroom painted and get at least a couple of new plants in the ground in that area by the end of this month.

Well, last night, I was scrolling social media, as I do every night as I’m winding down before bed. And I just happened upon a video that really made me think. I wish I would have saved the video because I can’t find it now, but I found it very interesting, but I’ll try to summarize it. The woman on the video was saying that the main thing standing in the way of people who struggle with productivity is that they get bogged down in focusing on the dread of each step that’s required during a project, whereas those who are really productive don’t get bogged down on those details. Instead, those who are really productive keep their main focus on the payoff that comes when the project is finished.

I thought that was really insightful. And true. I think that’s the problem I’ve had lately. I mean, let’s face it, this foyer and bedroom project has required a whole lot of drywall work, and of all the DIY stuff I do, drywall is the absolute worst. I mean, I just can’t even stand doing drywall.

The foyer and bedroom have come a long way from what they were at the beginning of the year. After watching that video last night, I pulled up my 2025 House Goals post that I wrote in January, and I was actually surprised when I was reminded how these areas used to look. The drywall in the foyer was a disaster.

It makes me feel anxious just looking back at those pictures. And it makes me feel proud that the foyer and doorway into the closet looks so completely different now, and this was done by my own two hands.

But at the same time, I’ve found myself getting up every morning and dreading the work. I don’t want to work on trim anymore. And I was especially discouraged when I felt like I was going backwards and address the drywall situation yet again even after I thought the drywall was all finished.

So after I watched that short video, I began to focus on the payoff at the end of this project. That payoff is pretty amazing — an entire bedroom suite completely with a beautiful foyer, an amazing walk-in closet with a laundry area, a beautiful bedroom, and an amazing bathroom. All together. All finished. All one huge, dedicated space that will be our master bedroom suite.

Never in my life did I think I’d ever have such an amazing bedroom suite. And the only thing standing in the way of this vision being finished lately is me and my mindset — my mindset that has been stuck on the dread of having to do more drywall work, and the dread of having to deal with unlevel floors that make installing trim more challenging. My dread that keeps me in a constant cycle of looking for and making excuses for needing constant breaks from the task in front of me that I really don’t want to do.

But last night, when I started focusing instead on the payoff at the end of this, I did actually notice a change. I started to get really excited. That drywall work that I need to get done today before I can finish the trim? I can get that done very easily. Installing the rest of the trim and getting it wood filled, sanded, and caulked? It’s not enjoyable at all, but once I get that done, I can get to some fun projects like making an upholstered headboard! Installing that light in the foyer? Yes, it’ll require even more drywall patch work, but then I’ll have a gorgeous light in the foyer and be on my way to having a finished and gorgeous foyer!

I actually woke up this morning excited and anxious to get in there and get the work done. I haven’t felt that way in weeks. It really is amazing what a change in mindset can do. So from here on out, I’m going to challenge myself to keep the payoff at the forefront of my mind instead of getting bogged down in the dread of the task directly in front of me. I’m so glad I happened upon that short video. We really can be our own worst enemies sometimes, and sometimes all it takes is a random two-minute video on social media to make us realize that.

So now, I’ve got some drywall to finish, and some trim to install and finish! And I’m actually feeling quite excited about it today!

First, let me show you actual pictures to remind you of how these areas flow together in real life. I’ll start with the music room. Obviously, this isn’t a recent picture. Once I get the bedroom suite to the point where I’m ready to load in furniture and decor, I’ll get the tools, boxes, and paint cans out of the music room and get updated pictures. But for now, this will have to do.

So in the picture above, the cased opening on the far left is now the doorway to our bedroom suite. That’s where I installed the French doors as our bedroom doors. The doors in the center of the photo lead to the sunroom. That’s the room that will be torn down, and once we build our addition, the room just beyond those doors will be the family room. And then the cased opening on the right leads to the kitchen.

The view from that cased opening between the music room and the kitchen looks like this…

Just beyond the peninsula is the dining area. In that photo above, that area was being used as a sitting room (long story). But for now, it’s being used as our temporary bedroom while I’m working on our bedroom suite. That 15-lite pocket door to the left of the shelves leads to my studio.

And then if I turn to the right just a little bit, you can see the cased opening between the kitchen and the front living room.

If I stand at the end of the kitchen peninsula looking towards the door to my studio, you can see the pantry there on the left.

So here’s a better look from the dining area (I’m standing by the windows on the front of the house) towards the pantry, the back wall of the kitchen, and then on the far left of the picture, you can see that cased opening between the kitchen and the music room.

Hopefully that helps you get your bearings a little better. So once we build the addition, then new family room will sit behind the music room and the kitchen and share a wall with the current pantry. So the first idea, which is obviously the easiest, is to leave the pantry as is and not bother with adding a doorway between it and the family room. Obviously, I like that idea a lot because it fits with my goal of getting the house done as soon as possible and allows me to keep all of that storage in there. The downside is that the only way to get to the dining area is through the kitchen. That may not actually be a big deal. It’s not like we live in a sprawling mansion, so the distance from that doorway in the family room to the dining area is really not that far.

The second idea, which was the idea that I had in mind, was to widen the opening between the dining area and the pantry as much as possible while still allowing enough wall space between the dining area and pantry to hide the upright freezer. And then I’d move the freezer to the opposite wall, which would allow room for an opening between the family room and pantry. The upside to that is that it would be a more convenient route from the family room to the dining area that eliminates traffic through the kitchen. The obvious downsides are (1) I’d lose storage in the pantry, and (2) the traffic would be through the pantry, which might seem awkward. Also, any time you add another doorway, you have to think about traffic patterns through rooms with furniture. So having a doorway there would limit furniture placement options in the family room.

The third option is to eliminate that wall altogether and leave the back wall of cabinets from the pantry. The upside to that is that the dining area would feel much more open. The downside is that there would be no place for my upright freezer, and I don’t know where else I could put the freezer.

And the final option would be to shrink the pantry to about 2/3 its current size, keeping the 2/3 of the pantry on the right side of its current footprint, add a wall on the left, and creating a kind of alcove with a doorway between the two areas. I actually really like this idea. The downside is losing storage space, but I also love that I could put a bigger window in that little alcove for a better view to the back yard. I can just imagine it with some beautiful curtains, maybe a little bookcase under the window, a table lamp for a soft glow of light at night, etc.

So those are the options that y’all have given me. I love testing out different ideas that readers give me and seeing how they might work for us. Y’all know that my brain gets stuck in ruts and I have a hard time getting myself out of those ruts. So it’s always nice to have outside ideas that help me think outside of the box.

What are your thoughts on these ideas? And if you wrote a suggestion in a previous post and I missed it here, let me know and I’ll add another floor plan with the new idea.

Yesterday, I got all of the trim and wainscoting painted in the bedroom foyer, and with each new step completed, I get more and more excited about how this is going to look when it’s all finished. There’s nothing like getting a fresh coat of paint on trim and walls in an area that has looked pretty messy and busy for so long.

I still didn’t have time to get the upper walls painted, and I also found that I didn’t have any ceiling paint on hand. I didn’t want to take time out to make a trip to Home Depot for ceiling paint, so I just focused on finishing up the trim and wainscoting.

What’s interesting is that in person, the trim and waincoting look so good and finished. But as I was editing these pictures, some areas of the wainscoting look like they’ll need another coat of paint. *Sigh* Oh well. At least the hard part is done with the trim and wainscoting. Getting one more coat of paint on those areas that show up in the pictures wont’ be a big deal at all.

Those big areas inside the picture frame molding definitely look a little streaky in the photos. It’s so interesting how pictures show things that don’t show up when looking at it in person. So those inside areas will certainly need another coat of paint. But at least you can see the color now, and you can just imagine how it will look with the teal grasscloth on the top parts of the walls.

I still need to paint the bathroom (storage room) doors. You can see that I got the dust cleaned off of 2/3 of the doors and then got sidetracked. That’s the story of my life.

I just love how this doorway into the closet looks. I can just imagine how it will look once the grasscloth is up. I think it will be beautiful.

I took a few wide-angle shots of the foyer so that you could get a better view of the whole area. Keep in mind that the wide-angle setting makes the area look a lot bigger than it actually is.

But so far, I’m very excited about all of my decisions — the wainscoting, the floor color, the walk-in closet doorway.

It’s kind of crazy to look back at how this small area of the house has changed and evolved over the years. In case you’ve forgotten, this is what this hallway area looked like when we bought the house…

In the photo above, I was standing in the doorway between the hallway and what’s now the music room looking straight ahead, and there were three bedrooms off of this hallway. In that photo, the doorway on the left went to a guest bedroom that eventually became our home gym and will now be our bedroom. The doorway on the right went to the original master bedroom that eventually became our big accessible bathroom. And the doorway to the third bedroom, which is now my walk-in closet and laundry room combo, is just out of sight on the far left.

When I started on this area the first time, no walls were moved, and all three bedrooms stayed intact. I did widen the doors to the bathroom on the wall on the right and added doors that opened like French doors. And then I added a built-in cabinet where there had been a closet. The door to the guest bedroom (now the walk-in closet and laundry room) still remained obscured beside the built-in cabinet. But this was a pretty large hallway in its original footprint.

And then when we turned the original master bedroom into our new bathroom, that’s when we moved the wall in towards the hallway and closed up that doorway to the hallway to square up that room so that it could become the bathroom. That left us with two bedroom doorways off of the hallway — the guest bedroom on the left (still obscured by that cabinet) and the doorway to the room that became the home gym on the right.

And now the whole area is almost unrecognizable from what it was originally. The whole doorway and the walls surrounding it were removed from the room that was the home gym, and that will be our bedroom. The hallway closet was removed so that the other doorway was no longer obscured, and that doorway was widened given more height, and that bedroom became the walk-in closet and laundry area.

But regardless, here’s what the bedroom foyer looks like as of this morning. It dawned on me yesterday as I was working that I can’t keep the doors on this bathroom (which will be a storage closet) painted teal. These will have to be painted, and white seems like the obvious color since all of the other doors in the bedroom are painted white. That’s going to be quite a change! I don’t think these doors have ever been white.

Way back when I did the original bathroom remodel, I painted those doors black.

And then I think it was a couple of years later that I decided to change them to teal. And they’ve been teal ever since.

So painting those doors white will be a big change, but it’s obviously the only color that makes sense.

And I have to tell you that after all of that indecision on how to finish out the doorway to the walk-in closet and fretting over how it would look to have this doorway be different from all of the others in the house, I am absolutely thrilled with how this looks. I just love how that trim looks wrapped around the door jambs.

Since it was going to be different, I wanted it to be obviously different, which is why I didn’t want to use any kind of standard or modified door casings around the opening. I wanted it to look very obviously intentional, and I’m very pleased with how it looks with the other two doorways in the foyer.

So that’s all of the progress so far. As I said, it’s not a huge difference from how it looked the last time I showed you, but I promise, lots of progress has been made!

I have more caulking to finish, and then I hope to get everything in the foyer painted by the end of the weekend. That might be an ambitious goal, but I’m going to try my hardest. I’m ready to move on to the bedroom trim!

And yes, it probably makes more sense to do all of the trim in the whole area, including the bedroom, before doing any painting. But when have I ever done anything in the right order? And I really need to see something finished very soon to keep me motivated. But I could always change my mind, also. Maybe I’ll decide to do the logical thing and finish all of the trim before I start any of the painting, but I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.

And on another topic, Jonathon G. Wells is back. Remember him? I wrote a whole post about him because he’s a lunatic, in my humble opinion, and since he’s a business owner who presumably goes into clients’ homes, I thought people should know what kind of person he is. It’s been a while, but he has reared his ugly head again.

I’ve blocked him on all social media, and I blocked him from sending messages to my phone, but I guess I didn’t realize that he can still send me voicemails. And that’s what he did. I’m sharing this publicly because he made outright threats this time, and I want this information to be very public because seriously, if anything happens to me, to Matt, to any of our animals, to our house or property, etc., I want thousands of people to know who to point the finger to immediately. And while I got sidetracked last time and didn’t take out a restraining order against him, I won’t fail to do so this time.

So last night, I realized that it had been a few days since I listened to my voice messages. I don’t answer phone calls unless it’s someone I know personally, and I almost never listen to voicemail because they’re never important. So imagine my shock when I got this voicemail from Jonathon G. Wells:

Yes, Kristi, it’s Jonathon Wells. It is about 4:30 in the morning. I have been made aware of your egregious post. My attorney has already been contacted. Take it down by 9:00am this morning or you will not be happy with the outcome. And that is a THREAT. I’ve already contacted the Waco police department. I have contacted others. You have no authorization to use any of the screen captures or any of the commentary that you have made. Completely inappropriate. You are unhinged. You are unwell. I simply mentioned “dust” on your ridiculous post gluing Christmas ornaments to your bathroom ceiling. You are a fat, ugly, disgusting c*nt. I am not playing now. I am serious. I thought that perhaps you had wised up and removed everything and let it go. Cleary you didn’t. You’re a sick piece of f*ck. Now take it down by 9:00am. That’s my final warning.

Let’s all take a second and laugh at the absurdity of him saying that I don’t have the authorization to use screen captures of his website where he used pictures stolen from other designers for his portfolio. So he can steal other designers’ pictures and put them in his portfolio, but I can’t take screenshots of his website. That’s rich. And absurd.

The second one was sent at 3:37am on Monday, September 15th.

Subject: CIVIL SUIT

The text of the email said:

Get ready. To lose everything.  All of it.  Every last cent you have. This lunatic is ON. You Fat, Ugly, Dusty C*nt.

The third one was sent at 4:21am on Monday, September 15th.

Subject: FAT C*NT – TAKE THIS DOWN IMMEDIATELY. ALL OF IT. EVERY UNAUTHORIZED SCREEN CAPTURE. EVERY COMMENT. EVERY LITTLE BIT. EVERY MENTION OF MY NAME AND COMPANY. IMMEDIATELY. I WILL COME TO WACO, YOU FAT UGLY C*NT. DON’T PLAY WITH ME ANY MORE.

The text of the email said:

I HAVE YOUR HOME ADDRESS.  YOUR HUSBAND’S WORK ADDRESS.  I HAVE ALL OF YOUR INFORMATION. YOU SHOULD BE VERY VERY AFRAID.  AFTER ALL, I AM A LUNATIC, RIGHT? BC I COMMENTED “DUST” ON YOUR POST. STALKER.  

For the record, I’d be very interested to know Matt’s work address. Anyway, I will be taking action this time, no question. These days, when someone says they have your address and make outright threats, that has to be taken seriously. Jonathon G. Wells is unhinged. And again, I want this information out there because if something nefarious happens to me, Matt, our animals, or our property, I want thousands of people to know immediately where to point the finger.

So yesterday, I got all of the baseboards installed in the foyer. For the baseboards, I used simple 1″ x 5″ boards topped with base cap molding. And then I cut and installed the chair rail molding.

I decided to skip that second coat of primer on these walls. I didn’t want to spend any more time gripping a paint roller because of my hand, but I also plan to paint all of the upper walls a dark teal before installing the grasscloth wallpaper. The main point of the primer was to cover over all of the unpainted drywall mud and drywall, and also to highlight any areas that needed repair/patching/sanding that I may have missed. So even though these walls still look like a mess, the primer served its purpose.

I did notice that I missed a spot on the ceiling, though. That will have to be primed because paint reacts differently over unprimed drywall than it does on primed drywall, and that spot will be obvious if it’s not primed.

Since the walk-in closet doorway is different from all the other doorways in the house (i.e., taller and just drywall wrapped around the jambs instead of trimmed out), I decided to wrap the chair rail around the door jambs. Since it’s different, I wanted it to be very obviously different so that it looks very intentional. I really love how this turned out.

On the baseboards, I did a straight cut on the 1×5 board, but on the basecap, I did the 45-degree cut so that it ended at the wall.

And then I did the same thing with the chair rail with the 45-degree turn that ends at the wall.

That will make the wallpaper installation a little more challenging in that area, but I’ll just have to be very patient and meticulous about it, and I think it’ll look nice.

In the areas where the chair rail butts up against doorways that are trimmed out, I just did a straight cut on those area. That’s how I did it in the music room, so I wanted those to be consistent. Once those ends are painted, they tend to disappear.

While I didn’t get any of the picture frame molding cut and attached yesterday, I did get all of the walls prepped for that. I know different people have different methods for this, but this is how I do it. I use a 1″x4″ board and a pencil…

And then I place that on top of the baseboards (on top of the base cap) and draw the line on the wall.

And then I repeat that process under the chair rail, and then on the sides to create the vertical lines.

Once I have that box drawn on the wall (I’ve enhanced my pencil marks in the image below), I measure each individual line to cut the trim.

The reason I do it this way is because I’ve learned the hard way that when dealing with an old house where baseboards might not be perfectly level and nothing is perfectly square, the finished picture frame molding looks a lot better if I follow the lines of the walls, baseboards, and chair rail rather than building picture frames that are perfectly square and trying to make those fit inside areas where the trim around them might not be perfectly square and level.

It’s a little more work to do it this way because every individual line has to be measured, but I’ve found that it produces a better finished result.

So today, I’ll begin the work of measuring all of these lines and cutting the molding for the picture frames. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get done, again because of my hand, but if at all possible, I want to at least get all of the trim in the foyer finished.

That includes the picture frames plus the rest of the crown molding. If I can at least get that much done, I’ll be very happy about the progress.

I hate that I’ve been slowed down by an injured hand, but that’s just how life goes, right? It’s definitely getting better, but it’s aggravating to be slowed down like this. I’ll just keep making small steps forward until I feel like I can move forward at a full sprint without reinjuring myself.

With that adjustment, I lost some depth. And I don’t know how it happened because I can’t get the math to math correctly. Losing that inch should have left me with cabinets that are 17″ deep, but somehow, I ended up with cabinets with an inside depth of 16.5″. And then I placed my closet rods 10″ from the back.

So, to be clear, my original plan had been to have my clothes hanging so that they were completely inside the cabinets with nothing sticking out, or barely sticking out. I didn’t have enough room to go any deeper than 18 inches. I prepared myself to be disappointed with how much my shirts would stick out from the cabinets. But once everything was in the closet and hanging on the rods, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed. In fact, I actually like how they stick out a little bit because I think that makes it easier to find what I’m looking for at a glance than it would have been had they been completely inside the cabinet.

That might not be true. Perhaps it would have been just as easy to see things at a glace even if they were completely inside the cabinet. But I still don’t mind the look of those shirts sticking out like that. In fact, I kind of like it. They’re colorful and pretty and I love seeing that glimpse of them as I walk past the door of the walk-in closet. So while it wasn’t my original plan, and it was the result of a mistake on my part, I’m actually very pleased with the 16.5″ depth of the cabinets.

The other side of the room has worked out perfectly so far. I can’t think of anything I would change on this side given the parameters I had to work with. Now in a perfect world, I would have at least 9-foot ceilings, preferably 10-foot ceilings, and I would have had plenty of room for a sliding library ladder so that I could easily reach those top shelves without having to access my step ladder.

But since I only have 8-foot ceilings, and there’s not really enough room for a library ladder in here anyway, the system I works perfectly fine. I keep that little 3-step ladder in here, tucked away in the cabinet opposite my shoes, and it’s very quick and easy to grab it to reach those high shelves. And it helps that I put shoes on that very top shelf that I don’t wear regularly, so I don’t have to access them often.

Probably the biggest question in my mind was how this arrangement of the washer and dryer were going to work out. There were many factors that went into my decision to place the washer and dryer opposite each other instead of side-by-side (including my obsessive need for symmetry, but that wasn’t the only factor).

I’m sure that several people were questioning my decision to separate them like this, but I can tell you that this arrangement hasn’t been a problem for me at all. They’re still close to each other, and I don’t even give it a thought when doing laundry. I’ve found that with this arrangement, it’s just as easy for me to transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer as it was when I had them side-by-side.

I do think the key is that I slid each appliance forward so that neither of them is sitting against the wall. I placed them close enough so that when the doors on both are opened, they’re fairly close to each other. So closing in that gap between the two appliances helps make the laundry transfer very easy.

I probably could have slid each of them forward another couple of inches, but I didn’t want to encroach on the window too much. And they don’t really need to be closer together. This arrangement has worked out perfectly just like it is.

Our bedroom now has an exterior door, and I love it…kind of. This wall is on the front of our house, and it used to have a window that looked like this…

And the last time I showed it to you, it looked like this. They had done some preliminary work that included rerouting electrical wires so that they would clear the area where the door needed to go.

I’m so glad to have this door in here. I’ll sleep much better with the peace of mind knowing that I can get Matt out of the room quickly and easily in case of emergency. That peace of mind is worth much more than what we’re paying to have this door installed.

I can’t wait to see it all trimmed out on the interior, and then to see it “framed” with the teal draperies. I think it’s going to be so pretty.

Once again, I’m debating what to do about privacy on the door. I’ll definitely need to add something for privacy since the door is on the front of the house. I haven’t settled on a decision yet, but I have some ideas.

So while I’m thrilled with how it looks on the inside, what I’m not thrilled with is the outside. And the issue isn’t even that we now have to doors on the front of our house. Since this one is way over on the far left side of the house, I’m really not bothered by having two doors on the front. But what does bother me is how unlevel the house is. For some reason, it’s not too terribly noticeable on the inside, but it’s very noticeable on the outside.

This section of the house is lower in this corner where these two sections meet. It’s been like this since we bought the house, so it’s not sinking. The house settled long before we bought the house. It would have cost a fortune to fix it, and even fixing it would have led to lots of other problems, so we decided to leave it alone. Since it’s not continuing to settle, it’s best to just leave it alone rather than try to fix it and lead to other problems that would need to be fixed.

But it’s very obvious, at least to my eye. And having a level door inside an unlevel section of the exterior wall makes it even more obvious.

But all we can do is just press forward and hope that once everything is trimmed out and painted, and once the porch area is built (which will be level with the door), it won’t be quite so obvious.

Dealing with an old house where things are never perfectly level and plumb has been one of the biggest challenges for me. I’m a perfectionist, and these things used to really bother me.

I mean, I’d lose sleep over it during a project where I was having to deal with how to work around these issues and make adjustments to disguise the issues. But after 12 years, I’m kind of used to it. I still get disappointed when the issues are obvious to my eye, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I don’t lose sleep over it anymore. I just try to make the best of it and move on.

But overall, even with the imperfections, I’m so excited to have this door installed. I think once it’s all finished, it’s going to look great. And that peace of mind that I feel having a door in our bedroom is priceless.