Sunroom Status

It’s taken longer than planned, but we’re finally making some tangible strides in the sunroom. As a quick recap – the sunroom had served as our interim storage room since we moved in, where the long narrow space and gross beige carpeting was doing the room no favours. We painted the wood paneled walls bright white, as well as all the trim, ripped up the carpet and replaced it with inexpensive vinyl tiles. Long-term, I’m still on the fence about the best way forward with this room, but until we redo the flooring on the main floor of the house, we wanted to make sure we got ample use this space. As mentioned previously, I’m trying to weigh the economics of vaulting the room in the sunroom and widening the opening against taking down the wall between the sunroom and living room / dining room entirely. There are a ton of factors at play, so instead we’re focusing on the short term.

Over the weekend, we installed baseboards, which gives the room a much more polished feel than before. Cory decided that the basic door trim wasn’t hacking it and tore it out to make way for decorative trim that matched the other doorways in the house. He also filled in the holes for the hinges from when a door formerly hung in the doorway. We still have one more door to sort out, but that’s going on the back burner until the spring. Long story short, we have a sliding door that leads to our back deck that has a faulty seal. To keep the room warm over the winter, we’ve sealed the door with plastic, but have plans to replace the door with a French door once spring arrives. I personally am not a fan of sliding doors, so removing the door will make me very happy and should increase the likelihood of us using this deck (I know that sounds absurd, but we’re spoiled with having a huge stone patio on the other side of the house… don’t hate us. I can promise you there are other things this house doesn’t have, like a tub with enough depth for a bath, for one). Anyway, getting back to the matters at hand.

Cory and I have sat down a dozen times to sketch up the plans for the window seat (over dinner, at the bar, while on the train…), where I have a vision for the aesthetics of the seat and he’s also working out the most efficient way to funnel the heat from the radiator into the room from the interior of the window seat. He also figured out how we can install an outlet behind the seat to power two plug in library sconces, so I’m sourcing those this week.

We’re about halfway through painting the million windows in the room bright white, and already they’re looking much better. Apparently Anderson Windows’ version of white is called Alabaster, and it’s not white but a dirty looking cream colour, so paint is a must in here. I debated painting the mullions of the windows black, as I have planned in the rest of the house, but these double paned windows have inset millens that are white, so it wasn’t an option.

On the decor front, we sourced a rattan chair off Craigslist with a cushion in dire need of reupholstering, so I’m ordering a bunch of fabric samples for the chair, plus pillows and the window seat cushion. All in all, there’s a ton of sewing in our future.

On Sunday, we moved all the furniture that’s staying in the room back into the space and found new homes for all the stuff that formerly lived in the sunroom in its former state as a storage unit. I feel like we can finally relax again now that we’ve reclaimed our main floor.

Looking back on what’s still remaining on the to-do list:

• Finish installing the edge tiles (two of the boxes of black tiles that we received had bent corners, so they need to be exchanged)
• Install baseboards
• Paint the radiator covers
• Finish painting the windows
• Order and install new flushmount ceiling fixtures
• Swap out the outlet covers
• Build a radiator window seat and sew a matching cushion (more details forthcoming on this)
• And then it’s decor: source a rattan hanging chair, two rugs, hang some art
• Eventually we want to replace the sliding door, with a much more attractive French Door, but that won’t be until the spring