We learned a few things while doing this project:

Show your space who's boss!

Before we started, we had a bit of an obstacleto deal with. The bump-out on the wall limited placement of the bed. The easy solution would have been to put the bed on the opposite wall but I really wanted to see the bed when you came in the room; it just visually would look better. So we decided to frame out the wall and make it flat. To avoid having to deal with matching the seams of the existing wall and the new walls to either side, we built the new wall in front of the old bump-out. That meant we lost 4 inches from the room but it was a much easier way to go about it. Lesson learned: don't be limited by the layout. Think creatively and find a way around it!

Sleep on it.

Just like we did when we were deciding on the size of the new laundry room, we wanted to visualize the design before we committed to it. So we drew our pattern on the wall and 'lived with it' for a few days. This gave us a chance to see if we liked the pattern, if we wanted to make it more of a regular grid pattern, if we wanted more or fewer strips. We did make some changes (like adding the platforms on which the bedside swing arm lamps sit) so sleeping on it for a bit helped us come up with a better design.