Well, folks. The studio bathroom is almost finished. I still need to hang the artwork, fix the pesky electrical outlet, and do a few paint touch-ups. It’s always the last few annoying detail projects that drive me into a corner. I’ll try to take the pictures today, but I won’t make any promises. It might be Wednesday before I can show you the last bathroom.
Until then, let’s talk about the back of our house and our back patio. I don’t show this area of ​​our house often (if at all) because, frankly, it’s ugly. You know, I’ve been wanting to tear down the winter garden and build an extension back here for ten years. But here we are, in 2026, and we still have the winter garden.
When we had the new siding installed and painted, I stopped at the sunroom because I didn’t want to waste money on a space that I thought would be gone by now. So not only is it ugly, it stands out because it’s a completely different color.
But since we’re keeping the sunroom for a while now, I think it might be time to paint it. I still don’t want to put new trim on. This will feel like a complete defeat to me, and I’m not ready to give up on my dream of signing and give in to defeat just yet. But a few liters of paint? I can do that. And since I’ll be doing some outdoor projects for a while, this might be the perfect time to do it.
I’m also thinking about finally getting rid of that awkward fireplace planter combo. We’ve never used the fireplace before, and I wouldn’t even feel safe using it if the tree was that close. And the planters are falling apart and are currently acting as a weed factory. I’ve wanted to get rid of them for so long, but I always thought I’d put any projects here on hold until we built the addition. But I’m tired of waiting.
I think with a coat of paint on the sunroom and the planters and fireplace removed, the back of our house could look…respectable. As long as the conservatory is there it won’t look great, but respectable is better than what it is now.
And removing the planter and fireplace would go a long way toward visually opening up this area and making the entire backyard feel more user-friendly.
At the moment we don’t use our back patio at all. Since the winter garden has been used as a storage room for so long, we generally avoid it entirely, which means that the terrace is not easily accessible. That’s why I use the patio for projects (I’ve painted a lot of cabinet doors there over the years) and where I collect all of my old, partially empty paint cans that can’t be thrown in the regular trash and have to be taken for recycling.
However, now that the plan is to actually use the sunroom as a home gym (which will hopefully only be temporary, but I have no idea how long that will last), that means this patio will be more accessible for us. So I’m adding these things to my list of outdoor projects I’d like to tackle. I don’t think it will ever look great while the sunroom is still there, but I can imagine the area with the wainscoting painted to match the rest of the house, the planters and fireplace gone, and the patio decked out with a nice outdoor seating area that we can actually enjoy.
I think it’s time to stop putting off using our backyard until we build the addition. This has been my mindset all along, but I really want to get our whole house, including the backyard, into a place where we can actually use and enjoy it without putting it off for a dream that seems to slip out of reach with each passing day. I don’t want to pin all of our hopes on something that might not happen for a few years…or might not happen at all. I want to finish our house as it is now and actually is live in it.
