Sunroom Redo, Part 1 -- Painting

If anyone ever doubted the power of paint, these pictures would have to convince them that, yes, a couple gallons of primer and paint could transform a room.  I mean transform, in every sense of that word. 

The sunroom has been the black sheep of our house since...well, since forever.  It has served as bedroom a couple of different times, and it's also been our office slash craft and music room.  But for the last 6 months or so, it's been storage, nothing more.  And we've kept the door tightly closed so that we can forget about it.  

Why?  What could be so horrible?  Well, my friends, I give you this: 

You can see that this room has not only red walls, but a red ceiling as well.  It was a very, very red room.  Not at all a place for relaxing.  This color, by the way, used to cover the entire exterior of our house until last year when we had it repainted.  Not only that, but we also had some sky blue trim kickin'.  It was enough to make your eyes hurt.  Thankfully, that's a thing of the past.  And now, so is this red room.

Here we go.  The sunroom is situated behind our laundry room, which is off the kitchen.  It was actually an outdoor patio, and the previous owners had it enclosed.  Because of this, it almost doesn't seem like it's a real part of the house -- it feels very disconnected.  Through this mini-renovation, I hope to sort of bring this room into the house a little bit more, to make it more a real part of our living space.

The picture above is what you see when you walk into the room.  Here are some other angles.  This is looking back toward the door that leads into the room.

Our wall of windows -- which I absolutely love.

The wall opposite the windows.  Yikes.

Dave really likes playing guitar and he really likes to surf.  We're going to have incorporate both of these hobbies into the room, along with all my craft stuff.  I also want to add some seating in one corner so that we can just be in the room to enjoy the light.

The door leading out the to pool deck.  In this picture, we've started to clear out the room a bit.

Ahh, the wall is empty.  Deep breath.

All that stuff has to go somewhere.  For now, the laundry room, but don't worry, I have a plan.

Cutting in!  I get so excited at the beginning of a project!

Woops.  Our first painting accident.  Natalie didn't seem to mind until the 5th washing of her hair.

Back in the sunroom, in diapers and undies, the kids "helped" paint the room.  Daniel:

And Natalie:

I can't tell you how pleased I was the first time I saw this as I rounded the corner into the kitchen:

I knew painting the ceiling would make a huge difference, but I was blown away anyway.

This is just the color-blocking primer.  Such an improvement already!

Our sunroom has real wood paneling since it started off as more of an outdoor space.  Painting in between the panels of the wood was kind of a nightmare and took a long time.

It was dark by the time we finished.  Therefore, my after pics don't show the result in the best light.  I'll be posting some better pics in the future as this transformation continues.  But for now, this is looking back toward the door leading into the laundry room and the kitchen.

The wall of windows:

And for fun, I brought in a little foot stool to see what that might look like against the new color.

I think it looks pretty good!  It's so nice to look through the doorway from the kitchen and see this room.  I love the view past the grey walls and into the pool deck.  Really, we've only started this room, but it's already come a long way.

Thanks for reading!
Sarah