You can find Part 1 here if you need to get caught up.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.  All good?  Great.  Below is what the room looked like before any work started.

BW hung and finished drywall on the perimeter, installed hardwood flooring, built a partition wall and hung and finished the drywall on it.  It’s almost physically painful for me to pay someone to do work that I’m capable of doing myself, but I can’t possibly express how much I hate sanding drywall seams.  Plus, I also have a full time job, and I’ve been wanting to get these rooms done for what seems like an eternity.  I’m fed up with my craft supplies taking up the dining room, along with most of the dining room table.  The clutter in the bedroom that accumulates when you are living without a closet drives me crazy on a daily basis.  I just wanted the work done.  And while I could’ve done it myself, it would’ve taken me at least six months to carve out enough time to do so.  BW had it done in about three weeks of off and on days.

Let’s start with the walk-in.

It’s about 5′ wide by 10′ long.  Storage will go on the left.  The vanity will be on the back wall.  I’m working on coming up with uses for the space on the right.  There can’t be anything that protrudes too far into the room, otherwise it will be more like a squeeze-in closet.  I want to have plenty of space to maneuver when selecting clothing or putting it away.  One of the things I’m planning is crown molding shelves on the wall to the right of the vanity.

I got a great deal on this birch hardwood flooring at $3.09 a square foot.  Unfortunately, now that it’s down, I don’t know how well it’s going to hold up.  I had BW install it in the upstairs hallway about two months ago, and it’s already scratched and dinged up.  Not deeply enough to remove the stain, but deeply enough to make me annoyed.  From now on, I will spend the extra money to get oak.

Partition wall finished and sanded.

Can I just tell you how much I love this scaffolding?  I have been working on this house for 8 years.  If there’s one thing I learned from my dad, it’s that whatever project you’re working on is made so much easier when you have the right tools.  So, I’ve purchased a LOT of tools.  I bought a specialty wrench, one I will likely never use again, just to tighten the drains on the kitchen sink.  That said, I can’t believe it took me this long to finally break down and buy scaffolding.  I’ve had it on my Amazon wish list for a long time, but I kept waffling because it was $200 and I didn’t think it was something I really needed.  For the longest time, I’ve been using two ladders with a couple of beams stretched between them.  Not exactly OSHA approved.  Now that I finally own scaffolding, I’m not sure how or why I lived without it and I’ve realized it was worth every single penny.  I painted the ceiling and every wall in the walk-in and I only had to move it once.  There is plenty of space on the platform for me, a can of paint, a tray of paint, and whatever other tools I need.

My husband will, of course, be using the walk-in too, but what I really wanted was a closet fit for a princess because having my vanity in there meant I would spending a lot of time in it.  I headed to the Home Depot to chose my colors.  I decided on Radiant Rose, a lovely shade of light pink, for the walls.  French Silver, a light grey, would go on the ceiling.

My husband made a comment about my Rainbow Brite blanket/curtains.  I told him this isn’t the first time I’ve had them.  This time they’re temporary.  I hope it wasn’t necessary to write that.

There will be crown molding installed in this room.  I don’t mind paying BW for that, because I’m about as good at crown molding as I am at running marathons.  Which is to say, both of those exercises (no pun intended) would likely end in tears and/or vomiting.  The back wall will be stenciled and all the trim will be Ultra Pure White.

On to the office.  This is where the original reach-in closet was.

There will be a u-shaped desk on this side of the room.  I have a “dresser” for one leg of the desk and I’m looking for a filing cabinet that will support the other end.  There will be wall cabinets above the desk and another cabinet across from the door.  All of the storage needs to be refinished.

This picture is terrible, but here’s another shot of the same corner.  Look at all that beautiful vertical space.

Here’s the entry door.  I still need to take the door and transom down and strip them.  They will be stained to match the rest of the trim.  Notice the color on the ceiling?  Did I mention I’m terrible at taking “before” pictures?

For this room, I wanted something cute and fun.  The challenge was how to accomplish that with a neutral color on the walls.  You don’t know this yet, but you will if you stick around here for very long.  I.HATE.NEUTRALS.  Neutrals are boring.  Neutrals are for people who are trying to sell their houses and for mental institutions.  I’m kidding.  Please don’t leave me nasty comments.  If neutrals are your thing, great.  Me, I don’t typically do neutrals.  Plus, this is going to be my creative space.  I wanted to be surrounded by inspiration.  It had to be fun, because I love fun for rooms like this.  It had to sing to me. I had to love it.  But this room doesn’t have a window and is only around 6 1/2′ wide by 10′ long. Putting a dark color on the wall would have only made it look smaller.  So I had to come up with a way to get color on the walls without closing in the room.  And then it hit me: polka dots.  Originally, I was going to go with a soft aqua on the walls with white polka dots and the same white on the ceiling.  As usual, I changed my mind.  Also as usual, that was after I’d already purchased a gallon of Behr Aqua Wish.  Instead, I went with Cowgirl Blue for the ceiling and polka dot color, with Vanilla Frost on the walls.

Painting completed.

I am the queen of cutting-in.

And with the polka dots started.  I don’t have a picture of the finished walls for you, but you get the idea.  I debated about painting the dots versus making circle stickers.  After some Pinterest research and mocking up both, I went with the stickers.  I liked the clean lines that the stickers provided.  I also wanted 1″ circles 9″ apart off center, and I couldn’t find a stencil with those dimensions.

Isn’t that adorable?!  There will be a separate post about the polka dots later, because that kind of drama deserves one.  The important thing is that I am absolutely in love with this room.  I can’t wait to sit in here and work and that’s exactly what I was going for.