Hello, Gentle Readers! When we last left our heroine…
Preparations for the ASPIRE House are in full swing (again!)! I encourage you to go back and read my last blog post about the show house, just to get your head back in it. *I* had to. I couldn’t remember where I’d left off because I wrote that post IN MARCH. A lifetime ago.
Remember this?

In my last blog entry about the show house, I mentioned an unexpected bonus space. Here it is: the little hallway leading to our bedroom:

These were taken early last week — which was the first time we saw the floors, by the way. Here’s another picture of that hallway:


I believe this little hallway was the result of a late architectural change. I’ve seen designers assigned spaces this small in other show houses, so theoretically, the hallway could have gone to someone else. Happily, it didn’t.
SOME designers would have declared this a throwaway space, slapped a coat of paint on it, hung a picture, and called it a day.
Well, Gentle Readers, as you know, Amy and I are not just ANY designers ;)

No, we couldn’t help ourselves and went (further) over budget to select a few things to make it special. (If you guessed that wallpaper is one of those things, you would be correct.)
I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I’m dying to show you just a glimpse, because I literally — literally — gasped (I’m a gasper) when our wallpaper installer sent us pictures. So just a peek…

Meanwhile, in the bedroom itself, we painted the ceiling a similar color to the walls to make the soffits less noticeable. Light pink. It’s a little thing, but it makes a difference.


And the wallcovering, which you can glimpse in the hallway picture above, looks fantastic. It’s blush, not brown as it looks in the picture — Haruki Sisal by Schumacher. Thank you again, Schumacher. We were going to paint, but…you know what a sucker I am for grasscloth.

The new dates for ASPIRE House McLean are August 21 – September 14 — Wednesdays through Sundays. (We’re photographing it in early August, thus the crunch right now.) Please put it on your calendars, and I’ll keep you posted!
Annie Elliott Design is based in Washington, DC, but we travel for fun projects. Annie’s design work and insights have appeared in numerous local and national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Washingtonian Magazine.