Since everyone is stuck at home, I figure it’s a great time for another home tour!
The sunroom in our house was one of the big selling points when we were bought it. It’s right off the living room and has 8 windows, 6 of which open to the outside! (The other two open to the porch.)
When we first moved in, it wasn’t necessarily a bad space, but none of the windows *actually* opened. They’d been painted shut on both sides—inside and outside. And of course, the outside also had storm windows that needed to be removed in order to free the windows from their painted prison.
The first day we moved in, my dad started working on cutting the windows free pretty much right when we arrived at 9 am. By 6:30 pm when my mom arrived with our pets, he was still working on the fourth window. He pretty much only took a break to eat lunch; otherwise he was scraping paint.
Womp.
But, refurbishing the windows was our first big project as home owners, which is still exciting! My dad helped the first day, and removed old paint from some of the trim pieces, but after that Sean took over. We eventually got the 6 outside windows out and refurbished, which helped the functionality a lot. They open super easily now!
Here’s a before and after from the day we moved in and earlier this month:
Okay, obviously the lighting is better in the after photo, but it really does feel like a whole new room!
In addition to refurbishing and repainting windows, we started out by removing the blinds and painting the walls the same grey as the rest of the house. The room started out beige, which wasn’t terrible, but we loved the idea of a consistent paint color throughout the whole house.
For a while, it stayed like that: grey paint, new windows, and maybe one chair and a dog bed. But in early March we were struck by motivation and removed the popcorn ceiling, replaced the ceiling fan, and ripped out the carpet!
Of course, then quarantine happened, so we can’t get anyone out to the house to sand down the hardwood and match it to the rest of the house, but grand scheme of things that’s totally fine.
The windows to the porch haven’t been refurbished yet (hence the two different paint colors on the window trim), but once we got furniture figured out for the porch and sunroom, Sean got one of the windows to open at least a tiny bit for some cross-breeze.
The floors definitely need some work, so to cover them up until quarantine is over, we got a rug that I love. It ties in nicely with the color scheme of the house and complements the rug in the living room without clashing.
At the front of the house, we have our reading chair, Stanley’s toy bin, and our signed game-used Petr Mrazek goalie stick! It’s been wrapped up and stored in the basement since we moved, so it was really nice to finally put it on display.
We currently have a desk on order from West Elm that will go in that space as soon as it arrives. It’s taking longer than expected, because, yunno, everyone is ordering desks right now. Eventually it will be really nice to sit there and work!
We’d also like to put some chairs on the opposite side of the room, where our chaise is currently, but we’re happy to wait on that because the chaise is doing a surprisingly good job filling that need right now. We know it’s not the end state of the room, but it makes for a really great spot to cuddle up with a book or sit with our laptops during all of our video chats we’re doing right now!
Sources:
- Wicker basket is old from IKEA
- Wingback chair and ottoman
- Rug
- Marble table is old from Pottery Barn
- Chaise
- Grey pillows are old from Target
- White faux-fur pillow
- Octopus pillow
- Blanket ladder is vintage from my family farm
- Fleece blankets are old from Costco
Things We’d Still Like to Do in the Sunroom:
- Refinish the floors so they match the rest of the first floor
- Put back the quarter-inch round along the existing baseboards
- Repaint the baseboards and registers
- Refurbish the windows between the sunroom and the porch and repaint the trim to match
- Get a desk (it’s on the way!) for below the front windows
- Get chairs / a different seating situation for the opposite wall
- Get new blinds for all the windows (the front 2 have already been ordered!)
- Get a new storm window for one of the windows
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