The Bedroom Is Getting Underway!
Good morning, y’all! I don’t have any exciting progress to share with you this morning, but I can tell you that I’m right on the cusp of things getting underway in the bedroom and foyer. I thought I’d actually be able to make progress over the weekend, but I realized very quickly that I was about to get ahead of myself. I needed to do a bit more planning before I jump in with both feet.
There has been a tiny bit of progress, though. One of the main obstacles has now been taken care of. It’s not too terribly exciting, but the breaker box is now moved up and out of the way of the wainscoting that will go in the bedroom.
And he did a very neat and clean job of cutting that piece of drywall out so that I can reuse it to patch the hole under the breaker box. And it’s already a perfect fit. That patch should be pretty quick and easy.
And my contractor called me on Saturday and said that he was ready to install the door in the bedroom. So he and his guys should be here within the hour to get started on that.
This is the door that’s going there.
I’m so excited to have this done, and so happy that he could fit me into his schedule right now at the very beginning of this project so that it can get done ASAP and then I can get started on everything else without having to work around and delay progress on this wall.
I also took some time this weekend to really think through the kind of wainscoting I want in the bedroom suite. I have two kinds of wainscoting in our house right now. I have the simple picture frame molding with a chair rail in the music room, which is right outside the bedroom suite.
And then I have the judge’s paneling that I put in both bathrooms.
The picture frame molding style of wainscoting is obviously the easiest and less expensive option. And that’s actually the style I would like to carry through into the bedroom suite from the music room. But with that style, I run into one issue, and that’s how to wrap it around the corner to the lower part of the door jambs at the closet. If you’ll remember, this is the vision I have for that doorway. Ignore the beadboard. That was just a quick copy and paste to get the overall vision of wallpaper and wainscoting. But the wainscoting and wallpaper will still have to wrap around those jambs, which are 5.5 inches wide.
It would be so much easier to wrap those jambs in wainscoting with the judge’s paneling style of wainscoting. But I don’t know that I want to add all of that extra work and cost to the whole bedroom suite just to make this one area easier. There has to be a way to make the picture frame molding style wrap around to that 5.5-inch door jamb and make it look nice and finished and planned. I haven’t quite figured it out, though.
Another issue (although, not a huge issue) is that the wainscoting in the foyer and bedroom will have to be about three inches higher than the wainscoting in the music room. That’s the only way I can get enough lengths out of the wallpaper I have to cover all of the walls in the foyer and bedroom. I’ve tried to envision the wainscoting in these areas being three inches higher, and while the perfectionist in me doesn’t love the idea, I really don’t think it’s going to be a problem.
And ordering more wallpaper isn’t an option because I have literally purchased every last roll of that wallpaper (it has to be a specific dye lot) that was available in the entire country. I have all of them. 😀 And as long as I raise the wainscoting three inches throughout the bedroom suite, I have just enough wallpaper.
I’m also trying to decide what kind of prep work these walls will need before I install the grasscloth. Obviously, I need to prime, and I’ll probably paint them teal as well. And before I do that, there are some repairs that need to be done to fill in screw holes.
But what I’m unsure about is if all of the walls will need to be skim coated. Since these stripes are painted, the tiny white stripes are actually a bit lower than the colorful stripes. If you’ve ever painted stripes on a wall, you know how the paint leaves little ridges where the stripes were taped off.
I have the same issue in the foyer where I painted the horizontal stripes on the walls.
Obviously, I’ll have to skim coat the lower parts of the walls under that 35-inch mark where the wainscoting will go or I’ll have those paint ridges showing through the paint. But I think the grasscloth wallpaper is thick enough to hide those ridges on the upper parts of the walls, so I’m leaning towards skipping the skim coating on all of the wall areas above 35 inches and just priming and painting those areas. It would sure save a lot of time if I could do that.
And finally, I’m no longer concerned about having this attic access in the bedroom after someone sent me a picture of how she finished off her attic access in a bedroom. (Thank you, Valerie!)
It looked so good and understated, and it pretty much disappeared into the ceiling. In fact, it was a whole lot less obvious than the air return vent in our foyer. So I’m going to copy her idea, and I think I’ll be very happy with that.
And finally, I decided to remove the ceiling light in the foyer and replace it with a recessed light, which can be centered.
The wiring is already there, and since the new light will be closer to the switch than the current light, I shouldn’t even have to do any new wiring. I’ll just cut a new hole for the new light, install it, and patch the old hole. That should be quick and easy as well.
The door installation will take two days. They’ll do all of the prep work today, and the install the door tomorrow morning. So I don’t really know what, if anything, I’ll be able to do today because I don’t want to get in the way of their work. But since they’ll be working in the bedroom, perhaps I can start prepping these walls in the foyer today.
But if you have any experience with grasscloth, I’d love to know what you think about me skim coating the top parts of the walls. My experience with grasscloth is pretty limited, and it’s been so long (back in our condo days!) since I’ve installed grasscloth, so I’m not sure at all if those ridges might show through. I tend to doubt it, but I want to be sure. So if you have experience, let me know what you think. I’d love to do as little skim coating as possible to get these walls prepped, but I also want the finished result to be nice. I’m okay with skipping unnecessary steps that won’t affect the outcome. But I’m not okay with skipping steps if they’re actually necessary and will affect the final result.
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Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
Is sanding the ridges an option? that sounds so much easier than skim coating and sanding. For the above section I mean.
Yeah! Take the orbital sander to it (don’t do it by hand)!
Sanding will work in the foyer, but I don’t think it will work in the bedroom. On the bedroom walls, the wide stripes are raised more than the thin white stripes. So I’d basically be sanding off all of the wide stripes to make them smooth with the thin white stripes. I’d rather fill in the thin white stripes, I think.
Wouldn’t sanding get rid of the ridges? Do you really have to skim coat? I have some sponge painted walls left over from the 90’s in our house and I was hoping a good sanding would be sufficient. I’m afraid of skim coating!! lol!
I know you don’t have an inch to spare with your grass cloth but perhaps you could get a sample from the company who makes it ( wouldn’t matter what color) and test it out on the wall to see if indeed you don’t have to do all of the steps. From my experience grasscloths are not all the same thickness so you need to get the same kind of sample but color wouldn’t matter for experimenting with it.
I am looking forward to seeing this room completed. It is the headboard I can not wait to see. I love that fabric !
Do you have time to order a sample of your grass cloth wallpaper, or same type but different color and install a small patch to see if the lines will show through?
I do a test strip of grass cloth (same weight, but not from your limited supply) on the wall to see if you’re happy with how it looks installed without skimcoating. I suspect you won’t be, so it’s better to know for sure before all the perfect stuff gets used up!
One more voice on the sanding, you can get the sanding pad on a long pole and away you go. It doesn’t take much. My dad did the vertical stripes in their living room a long time ago, and the first go around after listening to my mother he did not make that big of change between the colors, so I came back home and redid it with him. Long story short, we ended up taping the stripes twice to get it right. Fast forward a few years to where my mother was tired of the stripes and wanted wallpaper, flocked wallpaper in the living room with wainscoting. We prepped the walls by sanding with pads on poles and did a nice light primer on the walls and this is a room that gets a tremendous amount of natural light in it and there were no, and I mean no indications that there were stripes under that wallpaper ever. So, I think I can say that you will not have that problem in either room with a good light sanding. Nothing complicated and nothing so tedious that you are exhausted by the time you are finished. That grass cloth should take care of any stragglers, and with the wainscoting, again, I don’t think you’ll be able to see anything.
Cheers to you, Matt and the fur babies!
I think that just wrapping the chair rail and baseboards around the corner into the closet would be sufficient to get the look you want without looking odd. I believe that we tend not to see something missing, but if there is something that looks wrong, it stands out much more than something that isn’t there at all. Good luck.
I can’t imagine a grasscloth so thin that those small ridges would show. But definitely do a test first.
Dear Kristi,
If you install the crown first, you’d have your (extra) three inches of grasscloth to have the wainscot as high as you’d like it.
YHWH Bless You : )
I’m excited to get this refresher on the prep for wallpaper. I don’t know why, but this part of wallpapering intimidates me…wall prep. I’m scared the imperfections are going to show later on. 😫
Sounds like you have a path forward worked out! I just wanted to say I’m a little sad to hear there won’t be a small, tasteful chandelier or semi flush moment centered in the foyer. That would look so beautiful through the door and as you enter. But you do have lots of other things going on, so I’m sure it will be beautiful.
I would install a cased opening on the entry to the closet if possible. Then it would be trimmed like the bathroom/storage room door and the doors to the music room. The wainscoting and grass cloth would end nicely at the cased opening. (I vote for judge’s paneling!) I’m not sure if you have space for the mouldings on the inside of the closet but I’m sure you could figure something out.
Why couldn’t you do a quick sanding just on the lines of the stripes?
Could you maybe use a hand sander with appropriate paper to sand off the ridges of paint?
My 2 cents. No to doing the bathroom wainscotting. Yes to the music room style. I doubt most people will notice the 3″ ht difference since the grass-cloth is radically different from the upper walls in the music room. It shouldn’t draw the eye to the difference. Just a different wall treatment. If they were in the same room, it might be noticeable but not with the doors in place between the music room and the bedroom suite. The doors serve as a demarcation between the 2 areas and break up the continuity of the walls/wainscotting/chair rail.
And I agree with others who recommend a pole sander, used with pad vertical and not horizontal except where you have patches. Maybe 120-160 grit?
Hi Kristi!
I was wondering why you got a contractor to install the door? I’m planning on replacing my front door, and I was pretty sure that I could do it myself (maybe with an extra pair of hands), but now I’m concerned that I am underestimating the process. If you’re not willing to DIY it, what am I missing?
If you’re replacing a door with a new door, you can totally do that without a contractor. I’m replacing a window with a door, which also required some electrical work, and also some removal of stone on the exterior of the house. It’s not a matter of “can’t”, but a matter of “don’t want to”. 😀 If that stone wasn’t on the exterior, I may have done it myself. But I just don’t want to have to cut through stone.
Ah! I was hoping that it’s just a matter of “don’t want to” 😁 Thank you for your kind reply.
Yikes, I hadn’t thought about the paint ridges! Personally I think the grass cloth will hide them, but if you’re concerned I would do a light sand up and down the edges of the stripes and that should knock off the worst of it. The picture frame wainscoting is lovely and I don’t think the height difference will be obvious. Also there are gaps in between each ‘frame’ right? So maybe plan it out so the gap is centred on the 5.5” door frame so you only carry around the rail and skirting parts and it will look seamless?
I’m sure you’ve already decided what to do about the stripe ridges, but I would just sand them down a bit if you are at all worried. That should be enough to knock down the harder edge of the stripe. It won’t have to be perfect; the thickness of the grasscloth covers pretty well. I wouldn’t even worry much about the holes, just sand over them as well. I’m getting excited again, with another room being morphed into a butterfly from a moth!
Couldn’t you just give it all a quick sand? Wouldn’t that be faster and cheaper?
Just wondering can`t you sand the ridges down ???