Sunroom Make Over
11/28/2018
My oldest daughter and I recently took on a BIG project. We have spent nearly 100 hours over the last few months transforming our sunroom into a family room.
A few before pictures...
The room was just wood paneling, left untouched since the 1960s. There are 12 windows that are old and inefficient, but we couldn't afford to replace them all at this time.
The flooring was 1960s tile and contained asbestos.
Very first step - replace a section of the wood paneling that was water-damaged. Here is my daughter ripping out the old and then a shot of the new piece in place, prior to painting.
First steps - removing all curtain rods, face plates, trim and vent covers. Then priming the walls white. Such a drastic change from the wood color.
My daughter chose the color scheme. It was an exciting day to put this beautiful blue color on the walls!
Then we painted two walls gray and painted all the wood trim around the windows white. This was very tedious work that took many, many hours.
Next came a big step of installing new flooring. We covered over the asbestos tile with hardibacker cement board.
On top of that we laid carpet tiles. What an improvement!
We went with a "coastal" theme with these decorations and accents... lanterns, sea shells and star fish, boat oars and a Be Still/ocean waves sign that we created with our accent color.
My daughter created these three canvas paintings using the two wall colors plus our brighter blue accent color. So easy and yet so cool! They look great on this one short wall.
We installed baseboard and corner trim, along with a coat rack / mudroom space, which completed the room.
The room is now usable space! A lot of work went into the room but it is a joy now to use the room as more than a walk-through to the garage. The colors delight me and remind me of a summer day at the beach!
When funds permit we'll put some kind of window treatments up and finish up some decorative touches.
We kept this make-over a secret from our extended family, surprising them at Thanksgiving when they walked out to the usual "dining room" for our big group to find the room was redone and so lovely.
Good work, dear daughter! It's been suggested that this girl might have a future in interior design :-) I considered this a bit of our homeschool curriculum, to give her a chance to learn some new skills, to work hard to complete a long-term project and try her hand at some creative decorating. And our entire family benefits from the transformation of this room from trashy, wasted space to a comfy and cozy room that we all enjoy now!
