I only have a week and a half left to get work done on the house this year, so I took a look at my master list of home goals for 2025 to see how well I did. Of course, I won’t go through everything on this list. I never do that. These lists, which I create at the beginning of each year, are more like a general guide, a buffet table so to speak. And just like you don’t choose every single item when you’re lining up at a buffet, I never get to every single item on my lists for every year. But they are a guide that helps me stay focused throughout the year.
At the beginning of the year, one of the biggest things I really wanted to accomplish this year was that we could finally tear down the sunroom. We’ve lived with this room at the back of our house for twelve years now, and every time I go in there all I can think about is the day we can finally tear it down and rebuild it. It wasn’t well built. Since there is no air conditioning, it is hot in summer and cold in winter. The sloping ceiling, leaky back door, drafty aluminum windows and paneled walls are just depressing. And there are the last and only remnants of the original carpet from when we moved in.
If you’ve been here for a while, you know that this room used to be our “laundry room.”
But now I have a beautiful new laundry area in my large walk-in closet, so I no longer have to go into the sad, depressing sunroom to do laundry. (I need to take new photos now since I put curtains on the window.)
I can’t tell you how much I loved this new arrangement. If you’ve been thinking about installing a washer and dryer in a large walk-in closet, I can only tell you that you should do it, especially if you’re an empty household and don’t have to worry about children or other family members having to use the laundry area. I liked the convenience of having the washer and dryer in the walk-in closet so much that I can say it may have been the best decision I’ve made in our home so far. If it’s not THE best, it’s definitely in the top five.
Anyway, the last “permanent” item that remains in our sunroom and prevents it from being torn down is the water heater in the left corner in the photo below.
The water heater will soon be moved to what is now the hall bathroom, which will be converted into a storage area in our master bedroom. Once that’s gone, the rest is just junk to dig through and give away or sell, as well as my tools and DIY supplies, which will be moved to my workshop once I’ve sorted that out.
But as I sat at my desk in my studio this morning, daydreaming about our finished bedroom and how it could make our breakfast room a breakfast room or living room again, and rejoicing that our house would be put back in order when we finally had a real bedroom, there was a glaring problem. We still don’t have a suitable place for our training equipment. We went from having our own home gym…
…store most of these items in a corner of the winter garden. I made room in my studio for Matt’s Theracycle because he can’t live without it. He uses it almost every day, so not having it available isn’t even an option. I also put my small treadmill in the studio, but I haven’t used it regularly because even though the room is very large, my work tables take up a lot of the floor space and everything feels cramped. Since I was working on the curtains for the bedroom, I had to stand on the treadmill to reach part of the work table. It’s in the way and I really want it out of my studio. I also tried to bring my rebounder into the studio so I could use it, but it’s way too big and I don’t have enough space for it. Now it’s leaning against my desk.
You can see where this is going, right? I need these things from my studio so that I can actually use my studio to work on projects and have full access to my work tables. And this morning I realized that once everything is cleared out, the huge sunroom is actually a great place for a temporary home gym.
I both loathe the idea of spending time in this space and at the same time am excited about the possibility of having a dedicated space for all of our exercise equipment again. But I can’t bring myself to actually spend time in this room as long as it looks like it does now.
So I’ve decided that the goal in the near future is no longer to get the room to the point where we can tear it down. Instead, the goal for the near future is to design the space to the point where I can set up our exercise equipment and turn it into a space that I’m actually motivated to spend an hour or so in there every day and actually use it.
Obviously I don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. I mean, if I’m honest, I don’t want to put any money into it. But if that’s what it looks like after the eviction, I don’t feel any motivation to go into that room. This is the photo I took of the empty room when we moved in 12 years ago. I don’t have any pictures of the empty room since then because it has never been empty since. Add to that 12 years of wear and tear.
So I have to find the absolute cheapest way to make the room look somewhat presentable. At least I think a coat of white paint on anything will go a long way. I also want to pull up the entire carpet. I think there may be concrete underneath, and I’d much rather look at concrete than old green carpet. And then maybe I can find some very cheap curtains or drapes or something else to cover the windows, because it gets very bright (and very hot in summer) with the sunlight coming through the whole window wall.
This won’t be a fun project because there won’t be a big win at the end with a nice or impressive before and after. It will be purely utilitarian in nature and, above all, a temporary solution to an immediate problem until we can implement our long-term plans. But I think this is the best option at the moment.
It’s a bit disappointing. I can’t tell you how often I dream about tearing this room down so I don’t have to look at it anymore. But sometimes we have to work within our budget, space and time limitations. This is one of those times for us so the room will have to stay for now. I will try my best to make the most of it.
