Yesterday, I got all of the mortar done between the stones on the front porch. Now I just have to give it 16 hours to completely cure. So by 1:00pm today, I’ll be ready to prime and paint the skirting, and it’ll be done! I can’t wait to show you the finished skirting tomorrow.
But in the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about our sunroom. As you know, I can’t stand this sunroom. It’s a complete eyesore on the back of our house. The plan has always been to tear the sunroom down and add a new addition to the back of our house. But over the last few years, that plan has seemed to become more like a dream than a firm plan. First, there was COVID and interrupted supply lines that caused prices to spike (some of them doubling, tripling, and quadrupling during that time). And now with an uncertain economy, the idea of doing such a huge project and putting that much money into an addition really scares me.
So if you’ve been following along, you know that my latest plan has been to live with the sunroom, even though I really do hate it, and do a low budget makeover as a temporary fix in hopes that we can still do the addition at some point in the future. I had hoped to get away with tearing out the old finishes (disgusting carpet, asphalt siding, old paneling, drop ceiling tiles, etc.) and giving everything a coat or two of paint, and then using half of the room as our home gym and the other half as a sitting room with a TV for Matt so that I can have my breakfast room back as a proper dining area with a table and chairs.
But two things have me rethinking my super cheap makeover plan. The first issue is this back door. This is the original sliding door that was here when we bought the house.
Not only is it ugly, but it doesn’t even close all the way. When it’s “closed”, there’s still a sliver of space between the door and the frame. I’ve done everything I can to make it close properly, but no matter what I do, nothing seems to help. Plus, opening the door is nearly impossible. I have to put my full weight and strength against the edge of the door to even get it to open all the way. So just for practical and safety purposes, this door needs to be replaced if this is going to be a room that we’re actually going to be spending time in. And since I want to get the back patio all cleaned up and looking cute and usable, obviously, this door needs to be usable also. And if I’m going to go to the trouble of making the patio cute, I don’t want the view mucked up with an ugly back door.
I’d like to replace that sliding glass door with the same doors that I have on the back entry of my studio since they’re both in full view from the back of our house.
So replacing the door isn’t just a “want”. I think it’s an absolute “must do” for practical and safety purposes. But then that leaves me with the ugly windows in the sunroom. Since I’ve been spending a lot of time working in the carport over the last few weeks while preparing the stones for the front porch skirting, I’ve had a lot of time to look at these ugly windows and the whole backside of the sunroom. I really can’t stand the fact that we have nice, new windows and door on part of the back of our house, and then this huge eyesore of the sunroom with these old aluminum windows.
At first, I thought that there was no way I wanted to even consider replacing these windows in a sunroom that I really want to tear down. Replacing the windows just makes it feel even more permanent and like I should just give up on my dream of a new addition altogether.
Please excuse the neglected jungle look of our back patio. 😀 I’ve had zero motivation (and zero time) to get this area cleaned up because…why would I prioritize this? Even if it’s cleaned up, it’s going to look ugly. But as you can see, this room has so many large windows, so that’s another reason I hadn’t even considered replacing them.
But yesterday, as I was working in the carport again and staring at this mess, dreaming about the possibilities, I had an epiphany. Buying new windows to replace these old, single-pane, drafty windows doesn’t mean that I have to give up on my dream of an addition. I just simply need to make sure that I order windows that can be reused if and when we ever get to build our addition. As long as the new windows are properly sized for that addition, they can simply be removed when we’re ready to tear this sunroom down and then be re-installed in the addition.
I think this might be the best solution. It’s definitely more work than what I had planned to put into the sunroom makeover later this year, but I think it’s the smartest solution. If we keep these old aluminum windows for now, we’re really not going to want to spend any time in the sunroom. The windows are old and drafty, so the room gets really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter. New windows will help with that. And then we’ll already have them on hand for when we’re ready to build the addition. And in the event that the addition never gets built, and if that’s a dream I truly need to let go of, we’ll at least have a usable room with proper windows.
So that’s what I’m planning for now. My super cheap and simple sunroom makeover keeps getting way more involved than I had originally planned. But I think this is the way forward. While I really don’t want this room to be a permanent fixture on our house, it does need to be livable and comfortable while we have it and while we’re using it. But I can achieve that while not completely giving up on that dream of eventually tearing it down and rebuilding. And as long as I’m replacing doors and windows with ones that can be used in a future addition, that money won’t be wasted.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
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