Sweetie & Joy » Sun Room

Sunroom update (add a few curtain panels and – poof! – coziness ensues!)

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:00:19 +0000

Have I mentioned yet how pleased I am with how our sunroom has turned out? Just in case I haven’t: I’m very very pleased! As in proud mama pleased. Like my sunroom just got a shiny gold star for being awesome and I’m starting up the mixer to make it a big ol’ batch of congratulations cookies.

Or something like that.

Just as a reminder, here’s where the sunroom started…

It was a rather unfortunate shade of purple-ish gray, cluttered, and basically had become a dumping ground for stuff we didn’t currently have a location for elsewhere in the house.

Yep. It was one of THOSE rooms.

So, of course, I painted. EVERYTHING. The ceiling, the walls (BM Chelsea Gray), all the trim (in my beloved go-to trim colour: BM Snowfall White.) The only items that have not yet been painted to-date are the closet and back entry-way doors (and that’s coming shortly too.) When I finished painting, here’s what the room looked like…

Was I happy? OUI! But something was still missing.

Cue: curtains. Free Ikea Lenda curtains, in fact! Hand-me-downs from friends who were purging (like, years ago) that I’ve been holding on to ever since, knowing that eventually I’d have a use for them. And I did!

Here’s my newly painted sunroom, avec les curtains…

Eeee! The room now makes me so happy! It’s cozy. It’s organized. It might now be my favourite room in the house (and it’s not yet even finished!)

And I even repurposed the poor little piano stool that was usurped from kitchen-stooldom by my beloved vintage yellow barstool I inherited from my parents. It makes quite the nice little side-table!

What’s left to do? Door and closet painting, as I mentioned. I’d also love to find a cheap and cheerful slipcover for the sofa (since, while it’s the most comfortable sofa ever, it definitely isn’t the prettiest.) Art needs to go up on the walls, of course. And I’d love to get a more substantial rug for the floor too.

But for now, I’m happy. So happy, in fact, that I often just stand in the room and look around and smile. It creeps the cats out a bit, but I can’t help it. My sunroom makes me smile. :)

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Sunroom progress to-date (a little less purple plus a lot more organized equals one happy little sunroom)

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 10:00:19 +0000

I mentioned a looooong while back that I was ridding our sunroom of its purpleness. And then two (rather cute!) new cats came to live with us, and the sunroom became their home for a few weeks while they got to know Jacob a little. And then summer happened, and my brother’s wedding happened, and a whole lot of time has since passed and – poof! – it’s now over three months later. And, after all this time, the sunroom still isn’t quite finished… There are curtains and blinds to put up. There’s rearranging to do and doors still to be painted. There’s a not-yet-purchased slipcover to be applied to my very stripey (yet very comfy!) sofa. And I should probably put some stuff on the walls at some point too (you know, like art or a ceramic animal head of some sort or a picture of one of the cats) (the latter option, as we all know, is most likely.) But I figured, finished or not, it was about time for a quick progress update. :)

Here’s where we started (with purple-ish gray walls, oddly hung blinds, and way too much furniture and clutter)…

And here’s where we are now…

Every seam in the room has been caulked, the ceiling was painted, the walls got two coats of Benjamin Moore’s (scary and dark but awesome!) Chelsea Gray, and the trim was painted in lovely Snowfall White. And, most importantly, the room is no longer lavender-ish. Cue happy dance. :)

Here’s the other half of the room (aka my piano nook)…

The big white armoire next to the piano houses all of our bedding. Little 1940s houses don’t come equipped with much storage. Besides a small linen closet outside of the loo (where I store all of our towels) we don’t really have anywhere else for linens. Obviously, having the armoire in the sunroom isn’t ideal, but it’s close to the stairs to our second floor, so it sort of works. (And if you get chilly while playing piano, you can just reach on in and grab yourself a blanket. :)

Adding to my extensive and ongoing list of “rather silly things that the previous owners did”, the past owners of this house laid the flooring in the sunroom right before listing it but didn’t bother to cut the closet door down in the process, so it’s way too long and drags across the floor and doesn’t at all close properly. Sweetie has plans to make it fit better using some sort of scary powertool (we have a system in place and it works well for us: I paint, he uses power tools) and then I’ll paint both the closet door and the inside of the back door too. I’m thinking either gray-ish teal (similar to the colour already on the closet door) or (if I’m feeling especially gutsy) maybe a light maize-y yellow. (I suddenly have a real thing for yellow. It’s very odd.)

The couch was my first ever grown-up-furniture purchase (right after we bought our first house) and even though I’m no longer a huge fan of the stripes, it remains the comfiest couch ever. :) It may eventually get slipcovered, thus preserving its comfyness (while hiding its stripyness.) But for now it’s not offensive. And it actually looks a little beachy back there and rather sunroom-esque. :)

Here’s how things look from the hallway…

(Note: The door to the back room still needs to be painted [it's on my list!], and that doorknob desperately needs to be replaced. Big gold round shiny doorknob: I dislike you lots.)

And here’s the view looking out (including two rather comatose-looking kitties who obviously think that the sunroom is awesome)…

And there! Tada! That’s my new-ish and improved-ish sunroom so far. Better eh? There’s still lots left to do (curtains, slip covering, a less obnoxious doorknob…), but I am thrilled with everything to date. Further updates will follow (shortly, I hope!) But, in the meantime, have a lovely Civic Holiday (or Simcoe Day maybe? I think I completely missed that name change somehow…) In short, have a fantastic holiday Monday. :)

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Sunroom inspiration (because, let’s face it: dark paint is scary)

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:00:55 +0000

This weekend, the sunroom painting project will continue. Yay! Finally. If it’s the last thing I do. I’ve been in sunroom painting limbo for the past month or so, due to the acclimatization of two very cute (but, until recently, not yet Jacob approved) new kitties (aka Irwin and Erik) (or, as Sweetie has nicknamed them, Ir-dog and Booger.) And while I can’t say that they’re entirely integrated into our cat-family now, there is a lot of tolerating going on. Which is really all I can ask for at this point. (Although I’m hoping to find them all cuddling together and holding paws one day soon.) (Or at least hanging out in the same room.) (Baby steps, I know.) :)

So, on to painting! Hooray!

Paint was actually purchased pre-sunroom cat occupation, and it’s DARK. At least, it’s dark for me. To get all technical and paint-namey, it’s Benjamin Moore’s Chelsea Gray. And it looks like this (according to the paint blob picture-takers of the internet)…

How did I find said Chelsea Gray paint (considering my fear of dark paint colours?) By accident. Really. In a nutshell (since I could ramble on and on about paint for hours) (it’s embarrassingly true – just ask my friends) I was given the wrong test pot by a Benjamin Moore store representative (I think I had originally asked for Coventry Gray.) (Coventry… Chelsea… An honest mistake!) But, to my surprise (once discovering the mixup), I liked it. A lot. And I’ve been looking for a place to slather with its lovely dark grayness ever since.

And then, a couple months ago, I saw this room from brilliant blogger Love, Home & Style…

…and decided that the sunroom would be THE room to get a lick of Chelsea Gray (I think it was all of her windows that made me realize that our sunroom, with all its windows, could indeed be dark AND be fantastic!) Her room isn’t actually Chelsea Gray (it’s Shaker Gray, which apparently – and strangely – they don’t make here in Canada according to the peeps at my local Benjamin Moore) but Chelsea Gray is pretty darn close. Here’s hoping it looks just as lovely once up on my walls!

So that there is the story of how my Chelsea Gray sunroom came to be. Not that it’s Chelsea Gray yet. But it will be by the end of the weekend. I hope! (I really really hope!)

Have a great first official weekend of summer! If you want me, I’ll have a paint brush in one hand. Of course. And maybe a strawberry daiquiri in the other. I love summer. :)

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Could the next project in line please stand up (yes, that would be you, purple sunroom)

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:14:46 +0000

First admission: our sunroom isn’t really purple. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be gray. But at certain points in the day (ie: about 75% of the time) the walls have a definite lavender look. I’m not against lavender, per se. Lavender can be really really pretty in some spaces (I’ve threatened to paint our bedroom lavender more than once, in fact!) (Sweetie says no.) But gray (when gray is intended) should indeed be gray. Purple-ly gray has always looked like a mistint to me. Even if it’s perfectly intentional. At least in our sunroom it does. It drives me a little bonkers.

Second admission: our sunroom isn’t really a sunroom. Or maybe it is. I guess it depends on how strict you are with the definition of sunroom. Our sunroom is an addition one of the (many) previous owners of this house tacked onto the back of our home. It has three windows, which makes it sunroom-like, I suppose. But the windows aren’t really large enough to be truly sunroom-esque. It’s a strange little room really. I think it was constructed as an attempt to add more square footage to the house (which it does.) Unfortunately, it’s a long narrow room, so while it adds MORE space, it’s not entirely USEFUL space. Right now it mostly functions as our back entryway. Let’s call it a mudroom sporting a miscellaneous couch, a desk, and my piano. (Because every mudroom needs its own piano, of course!) I’m hoping a quickie facelift will make it prettier (if not more functional?) (Prettiness leads to function, right?)

Third admission: I would much rather be working on our kitchen floor than painting our sunroom right now. But, I’m still making the official decision on what to do with the floor (yep – I’m hopelessly floor-fickle) so in the meantime, the sunroom’s number has been pulled!

All that out in the open, could I interest you in some befores? Just so you can see where I’m starting? Here you are. :)

Here’s the view into the sunroom from our main hallway. And a cat.

Next to the piano (like, one centimetre away), is a really cluttered (soon to be relocated) desk…

…and next to the desk, squished onto the side wall, is the comfiest couch ever. EVER. (Jacob agrees.) Which is why it’s back there. I can’t bear to part with it, even though we don’t have anywhere for it really (except the sunroom.) Come over and take a sit on it for a sec. You’ll understand.

Something that drives me a little crazy about the sunroom? Check out the blinds. Specifically where they’re mounted…

Yep. All the blinds in the room are mounted above the windows. It’s not pretty. I can’t wait to tear those down.

Oooh! And let me show you the ceiling for a sec. :) Patching began a couple weeks ago with caulking the seam where the walls meet the ceiling alllll around the room. Why? Look…

Yep. Whoever finished this room didn’t really excel at taping/mudding. (Although, that said, neither do I LOL.) You can see a steady band of mesh tape (unmudded) alllll around the perimetre of the room. (Or at least you could until I got my caulking gun out!)

The good news? Once this room is painted, the entire main floor will be done. Done! Hooray! Then it’s on to the bedrooms. And the basement. And the front porch. (Someday I’ll buy a house that comes pre-painted.) (I hope.) (Ooooh! And a dishwasher! I’d really like a house that comes with a dishwasher please!) (Unrelated, of course, but very very true.)

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Well we’re all in the mood for a melody (particularly from a prettily-painted piano)

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:57:29 +0000

When I graduated from University with my music degree (totally seemed like a good idea at the time btw! Not at ALL practical in the real world however…) (ah, hindsight…) my parents bought me a piano as a graduation gift. I lived in a tiny little apartment at the time (apparently minature abodes are something I’m unknowingly drawn toward) so they bought me a digital piano (which, while being smaller/lighter than an actual piano, still feels and sounds like a large instrument. Quite brilliant!) It’s followed me around from apartment to house to house and now resides in our (spoiler alert!: soon to be painted!) back room. It’s not the ideal spot for it, but it’s the only place it fits right now, and this is where it’s lived for the past year.

The problem? Despite feeling/sounding like a piano, it’s not overly… pretty. It’s functional without the “fun.” It’s melodious but not merry. It’s plunky but missing the funky.

And then, yesterday, I found this post…

10 Pretty, Painted Pianos!

…via Pop of Pretty, and I’ve gotta admit, I’m seriously jonesing for a full sized REAL piano now. And not just any piano. After a bit more research (facilitated by my good buddies at Pinterest) I’ve decided that I desperately need a turquoise piano…

Adore adore and adore somemore. Amazing eh? C/O Kristi at Addicted 2 Decorating. :)

And then I saw this lemony-beauty and exclaimed (out loud, and with gusto): well hello, yellow…

Happiest piano ev-ver, from the cheery folk at Bake @ 350. If I had a yellow piano, I’d sit at it every day. I might not actually play it every day, but I’d sit and look at it adoringly and likely smile a whole lot too. :)

And seriously? How fantastically fun is this…

I’m not normally a green person (does that make sense? Likely not) but this kelly keyboard from Design Mom totally makes me giddy.

And then there’s this elegant lady in white…

…from a fine faux-ivory-loving flickring fan. :) I might be in love. (Insert ginormous enamoured sigh here.)

Yes. I would looooove a painted piano. Mine is just so… dreary by comparison. Don’t believe me? See for yourself…

Can I get a dramatic “dun dun dun?” Thanks. Yup. You’ve entered Drearyville, population 5 (that’s five, including me, Sweetie, two cats and one digital keyboard.)

Sadly, we have neither the budget nor the space for a lovely (and much longed-after!) full-sized instrument at the moment. However, I haven’t given up all hope of having a pretty piano. No siree bob! Why? Because I found this…

…from the folk at The Junk in our Trunks and realized that while no, I probably shouldn’t paint my digital piano, I could possibly add a decal or two to fancy it up a bit… Maybe not a ginormous poppy, per se, but a pretty little decal couldn’t hurt, eh?

And so off I go to hang out with the nice people at Etsy in the hopes of finding a piano-worthy decal. Something flowery would be cute, non? (Again, ixnay on the giant poppy!) Or something graphic could be super fun… And poof! Suddenly I’m way more excited about my dreary little piano than I’ve been in years. My university profs would be so proud! And possibly a little shocked (I don’t know how they’d view my desire to piano-primp.) But mostly they’d be proud. Maybe. I think. :)

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