Yesterday I applied all the mortar between the stones on the porch. Now I just need to give it 16 hours to fully cure. So today at 1pm I’m ready to prime and paint the baseboard and it’s done! I can’t wait to show you the finished skirting board tomorrow.
But in the meantime I’ve been thinking a lot about our winter garden. As you know, I can’t stand this sunroom. It’s an absolute eyesore at the back of our house. The plan has always been to tear down the conservatory and build a new extension at the back of our house. But in recent years that plan has seemed more like a dream than a solid plan. First, there was COVID and disrupted supply lines that caused prices to rise (some doubling, tripling, and quadrupling during this time). And given the uncertain economic situation, the idea of undertaking such a large project and investing so much money into an extension scares me greatly.
So if you’ve been following along, you know that my final plan was to live with the sunroom, even though I really hate it, and do a low-budget remodel as a temporary solution in the hope that we could still manage the addition at some point in the future. I was hoping to get away with ripping out the old finishes (disgusting carpet, asphalt siding, old paneling, dropped ceiling tiles, etc.) and giving everything a coat or two of paint and then using half the room as our home gym and the other half as a living room with a TV for Matt so I can have my breakfast room as a proper dining area again with a table and chairs.
But two things are making me rethink my plan for a super cheap remodel. The first problem is that back door. This is the original sliding door that was here when we bought the house.
Not only is it ugly, it also doesn’t close completely. When “closed” there is still a gap between the door and the frame. I’ve done everything I could to get it to close properly, but no matter what I do, nothing seems to help. In addition, opening the door is almost impossible. I have to put all my weight and strength against the edge of the door for it to even fully open. So for practical and safety reasons, this door needs to be replaced if this is going to be a room we actually spend time in. And since I want the back patio to look all tidy and pretty and usable, of course that door has to be usable too. And if I’m going to go to the trouble of making the patio pretty, I don’t want the view to be spoiled by an ugly back door.
I would like to replace this sliding glass door with the same doors I have at the back entrance of my studio since both are clearly visible from the back of our house.
Replacing the door is not just a “wish”. I think it is an absolute “must” for practical and safety reasons. But then all I have left are the ugly windows in the winter garden. Since I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few weeks working in the carport and preparing the stones for the porch baseboards, I’ve had plenty of time to look at those ugly windows and the entire back of the sunroom. I really can’t stand that we have nice new windows and doors on part of the back of our house and then this huge eyesore in the sunroom with these old aluminum windows.
At first I thought there was no way I was going to consider replacing these windows in a sunroom that I’m dying to tear down. Replacing the windows just makes it feel more permanent and makes me feel like I should just give up on my dream of a new home altogether.
Please excuse the neglected jungle look of our back patio. I had no motivation (or time) to clean up this area because…why should I make it a priority? Even if it is cleaned up, it will look ugly. But as you can see, this room has so many large windows, which is another reason I haven’t even thought about replacing them.
But yesterday, as I was working in the carport again, staring at this mess and dreaming of the possibilities, I had an epiphany. Buying new windows to replace the old, drafty single pane windows doesn’t mean I have to give up on my dream of building an extension. I just need to make sure I order windows that can be reused if we are ever able to build our addition. As long as the new windows are the right size for this extension, they can easily be removed when we are ready to demolish this conservatory and then reinstalled in the extension.
I think this might be the best solution. It’s definitely more work than I wanted to put into renovating the sunroom later this year, but I think it’s the smartest solution. If we keep these old aluminum windows for now, we really won’t want to spend any time in the sunroom. The windows are old and drafty, so the room gets very hot in summer and very cold in winter. New windows help with that. And then we’ll already have them on hand 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 really have to give up on, at least we’ll have a usable space with proper windows.
So that’s what I’m planning on doing now. My super cheap and easy sunroom renovation is becoming much more complicated than I originally planned. But I think this is the way forward. Although I really don’t want this space to be a permanent part of our home, it still needs to be livable and comfortable while we have it and while we use it. But I can achieve that without completely giving up on the dream of eventually tearing it down and rebuilding it. And as long as I replace doors and windows with ones that can be used in a future addition, that money won’t be wasted.
