I wanted to post some after photos and thank everyone who took the time to comment. It turns out that the wall was "indented" when we removed the chair rail so my DH has spent several weekends to build it back up with joint compound and texture it to blend in with the walls. It was a painfully tedious process (first trying to do it by hand, then with a sponge, then with spray-on compound that dribbled everywhere, and finally with a trowel lightly loading dabs of compound on). If you look closely you can still tell, but it's not as glaring as it was several iterations ago. Suffice to say, we are thrilled to be done with sanding, priming, texturing, and painting! Now, I need to figure out what wall decor to put up as the removal of the chair rail makes it a much easier space to deal with! Any and all advice would be appreciated. I was thinking of doing a photo gallery near the front entry, but that is a HUGE wall and I don't know that I can put photos high enough where you can still see them but not so low that the wall looks off-balance. Forgive the quality of the photos, taken without a flash on my iPhone.

So...we turned our stairs 90 degrees in our remodel. In fact, the stairs were what started the whole mess. Initially our stairs were right at the front door, there was a clearance of 1/16" inch. Yes, 1/16" when the door was opened. It was nuts. When we purchased the house we knew we were going to turn the staircase. There was a clear space for it to turn into. Major surgery. But it made an enormous difference....visually and functionally.

Yes. I know there is a very small chance of him climbing over, again it’s just truly only part of the reason and would be great to have a upstairs that is it’s own space. It is just going to be a wall so I guess that’s that. Thank you palimpsest for the photo. That is exactly what it would look like. Beth H. Yes I would love to redo my stairs at some point, but it is not currently in the budget. We are updating the chandelier next. Thank you for the ideas. Hopefully someday soon we will be able to update them as well.

Help! I'm in need of a paint color to replace all the blue seen in these pictures (posted in comments below)... any lighter color washes out because we have so much light. (North/South exposure in this area) But choosing a darker color (I'm think lrv of 45 or less) is intimidating! I tend towards liking cool rather than warm, but don't love trendy grays right now. But I'll take any and all suggestions!