Solarium: Start to Finish!

This is what the house looked like in the listing when I bought it - cute right?

Nice little sitting room right inside the front door and adjacent to the living room.

Then I saw this. Everything might have been easier...if I hadn't seen this. ;)

So, naturally, we ripped everything apart..

..and fixed the things that needed fixed..

Here's mom/former roommate finishing up the last of the insulation. As with the rest of the house, the wiring was completely redone in the solarium, as was all the insulation, wallboard, wood floors, and trim..though, a lot of the woodwork throughout the house was salvaged.

Hooray for drywall!

..well..sort of. See, I got a deal on some really nice windows; so, rather than replace the two that were there, I decided to take it back to the way it looked it that damned old picture.

Finishing up the new windows and front door.

All in!

Testing out my new grilles :)

Trim is up and ready for sanding (which left dust ALL over the house), priming, and painting!

As of last night: all painted and ready to go! (As you can also see, the greenhouse is in full swing..)

Looks pretty good, if I do say!

Solarium Sunday

I don’t know about you, but I had myself a busy little weekend!

Friday night I had to be responsible – I spent the night cleaning the house, doing laundry, and getting beds ready for company. Not terribly fun, but not bad either..and it needed done.

Saturday was the Brews & Muse street festival at the local brewery. I had a couple friends in town and we had a great time listening to a couple great bands, meeting new people, and eating and drinking way too much J

Sunday morning, my friends and I started talking about installing windows in the front porch/solarium/greenhouse and decided we’d give it a shot!

Remember what we started with?

The original plan changed because the new windows were shorter and narrower than the old windows – with that, we were able to squeeze five windows along the east wall of the solarium creating an entire wall of windows! It’s going to look great when it all gets trimmed out and painted J

A pretty good sized hole..

HUGE view! :)

The frame we built for the windows. I just KNEW this was the way to do it..turns out I was wrong :)
It all worked out, anyway!

Getting everything cleaned up - what a difference!

Once things have calmed down a bit, I'll order the decorative grilles for the windows to give everything a little more traditional look.

After cleaning up the large pile of window waste. Not looking half bad!

They even line up! It's like someone knew what they were doing! HA!

Two more windows and a new front door yet to come, but this was a big day for us – a HUGE thanks again to my amazing friends for hanging out with me Saturday and Sunday and being roped into slave labor!

Solarium windows making a comeback!

While I’ve pretty much done my own thing with this house, I am still trying to be sensitive to its history. Especially on the exterior and the larger, more expensive and/or hard-to-change areas of the house. I use the old family pictures as a reference more often than not, and I think they have been hugely helpful in giving my project(s) a direction. Especially when it comes to the front of the house.

While my landscaping may never look this good, I hope the house will!

As you can see, the front of the house used to be much more ornate than it currently is. However, over time, the roof over the enclosed porch/solarium proved to be too leaky and too big a headache to maintain anymore and the current sloped roof was put in place sometime in the 1970’s.

We'll be replacing the windows in the solarium/greenhouse and rebuilding the latticework around the front door to match the older pictures. I will also have the small window put back above the bay window and am trying to find a design for the gingerbread in the gable.

With all kinds of new roofing products out there, I would LOVE to be able to replace the pitched roof over the porch with a flat roof and rebuild the decorative rail. That will be a project for another..year.

The project we’ll be working on soon enough is residing the front of the house and replacing the windows in that area.

Our siding project last year lasted as long as the weather would allow – we hung siding (in sweatshirts and hats) until November 9^th when the snow started to fly. At that point, I was out of money and siding to hang so it seemed like a natural stopping point.

With the other big projects finished, and the inside of the house becoming more and more finished every day, we’re turning – once again – to siding.

Completely by chance, I was able to purchase seven new windows for the solarium at a deep discount. The windows are double hung, aluminum-clad Pella brand and are absolutely outside my price range if not for the restocking sale offered by the manufacturer (Pella Corporation’s headquarters happen to be 15 miles away..in Pella: http://www.pella.org/)

Playing in the big leagues now!
http://www.pella.com/home/default.aspx

So, I lucked out yet again J Now I’ll have all the windows back in their original placement – I’m even ordering muntins to match the pattern of the old style from my pictures so I can have the best of both worlds: the charm of the old style, with all the efficiency and convenience of new products!