An OMG! moment.

Two doors cluttered a wall at one end of our living room: The first to the guest room, the other was a narrow closet.

To allow the sofa to sit against the wall, I’d closed the lower half of the closet, and formed a niche with the upper part. Debating about lighting inside the niche, I sent a photo to an architect friend.

His response opened an entirely new dilemma. “The light’s not important, but could you move that door? It would be cleaner. You’d eliminate the need for access, and free up more space.”

I’d missed that but saw no alternative for the door to the guestroom.

The new kitchen sits next to the guest room and a pantry occupies half of the wall between them. The rest of the wall has a bathroom which was altered to open from the guest room rather than the kitchen.

The original guestroom bathroom shared a wall with the new vestibule. By opening the wall where the shower had been, I converted it to a powder room. It was a large powder room, but I avoided moving any plumbing.

With only two interior walls, no solution came to mind…. Until three AM the next morning, when the answer startled me from sleep.

OMG! How could I not have seen this earlier?

We had already removed the shower and knocked out a door from the vestibule to the powder room. But closing it again, and moving the sink and vanity there, was the perfect solution.

An opening where the vanity had been, would permit a hallway, with a door to the powder room and another to the guestroom. Not only did this clean up the living room wall, but it also provided privacy to the guestroom.

It would have been cheaper had I done this earlier, before we knocked out and finished the door into the powder room… but better late than never.