Come see the view from our Sunroom

I am so excited because we are finally making progress on our sunroom.  When we moved in 4.5 short months ago this room had some stinky, dirty, old carpeting that we could not wait to take out.  It also had way too many dirty, stinky cellular shades.   In it’s current state the room is definitely only usable about six or seven months out of the year because it has AC, but no heat.  You can’t exactly do much in a room with no heat in Chicagoland…let’s keep in mind what our house looked like when we moved in:

Burr!

And the fact that June is more than half over and today we had temps in the 60s (I was kinda chilly as I walked to my office in a fleece)!

I need to get a little better with taking pictures; I just realized we don’t exactly have much of a “Before” photo of the sunroom.  Here is all I have:

Looking inside room from Garage

Yuck, check out that gross carpeting!  You can see in the back that we are starting to take it up…

A second look...

Don’t mind the moving fan and the handsome little doggie.  I guess now is a good time to meet Stewie, our son.

How could you not love that face?

You may be seeing more and more of the little devil, as he likes to get in the middle of every photo…it’s kind of like “Where’s Waldo” sometimes =)

Our plan is to make this room more of a family room where we can watch TV and play with Waldo, I mean, Stewie.  This should involve painting, replacing carpet, adding a heat source, then decorating (my favorite part)!  Here is a peak at my moodboard for said room:

Sunroom Moodboard

The first step is getting rid of that wall to wall carpet.  Kevin did most of the work, but I tried to pitch in.  Underneath we found some rotten boards, but mostly a strange wood-like tile…

No more carpet!

Look at that view!

I look forward to being able to utilize this room; the view into our backyard is so lovely…including our…um…Topsy Turvy Tomato Tree!!  Can you see it on the deck?  Has anyone out there successfully used one of these?  Kevin and I decided to try it since we didn’t really have time to build a proper garden, but wanted to try to grow some veggies.   We planted quite a few tomato plants in that crazy tree, as well as basil, oregano, and some hot peppers.  I’ll let you know if we get anything!

Back to the room with a view:   we decided to paint the walls Benjamin Moore “Sail Cloth” paint and primer combo.  Just one coat covered the areas we patched with wood-filler and even the knots on the knotty pine.  Kevin also gave the woodwork a fresh coat of white, and replaced the rotten wood.  The carpeting was installed just hours ago; we should have a finished room in no time!

An "Almost After" peek at the Sunroom

It is hard to tell from the photo, but the carpet is a longer/almost shag-like two toned Mohawk product.  It looks so nice and new; hopefully we can keep it clean!  The next step is ordering all the blinds and getting that heat in there.  Thankfully we have a pretty powerful boiler in the basement that will be able to heat this room by installing radiant baseboard heat.  I am not entirely sure what that will look like…but I will know by the end of next week when the come out to install it!    Check back soon to see the results  =)