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