Our 100 year old house has this fun, hidden room at the end of the 2nd story hall. Once I entered the doorway, even in its rough ‘before’ condition, it was clear to see the wonderful potential this room had with 3 walls of huge windows, beadboard walls and ceiling, and old wood floor.
So the before…
Well this is before I did anything to the room, besides moving the furniture from the sunporch of our former house into this room. We were so busy renovating the rest of our 100 year old house, and trying to get through the overgrown yard, this hidden treasure of a room was forgotten for a while.
See that green window box laying on its side on top of the vintage trunk? That was the 1st project for this room… (You can read more about those window boxes here) But once they were installed, it’s what I call the ‘mushroom effect’… one thing leads to the other, until a simple project ‘mushrooms’ out of control.
Ha ha… well it wasn’t out of control, but that little project did lead to a lot more work for me. Now that it’s done though, I gotta say, I love this space!
First up… literally! The ceiling.
This old porch has a pretty low ceiling. I could paint the whole thing without a ladder. I didn’t actually measure it… I am kind of tall, but not exactly Amazon-ish 😉 so I’d guess the ceilings are around 7′ tall…
There was a tiny part of me that was a little sad to cover the very old original wood, but because the ceiling is low compared to the rest of the ceilings in our house, I really wanted to visually lift it up and lighten the space altogether.
Light sky blue paint on the ceiling made the greatest impact in this space than anything else I did to it. (you can read more about the painting of the ceiling and floor here)
Because the ceiling is so low, even though the ceiling fan breeze was nice, I felt like when the fan was on, it was machete blades whizzing at just the top of my head, too close, literally, for comfort. So I opted to take the ceiling fan down, replacing the breeze on the ceiling with an oscillating tower fan on the floor.
And found this art glass retro looking light fixture HERE. Since we have a fun assortment of art glass out here on the porch, this light fixture fits right in.
Another change was the old rug that fit perfectly in our former sunporch, was just a wee bit too small for this space, and I felt I was cramming the furniture on it, leaving the other half of this long room empty.
I found this lovely, much larger, Karastan rug on the 2nd hand market. When I looked at it initially, though I had measured my space and knew it’d be the perfect size, I was a bit concerned it had too much pink in it. But once in this space, with all the fun colors of this room, the pink doesn’t play out as loud as it did in the prior owner’s space. In fact, the orange in it works so nicely with the orange seat cushions on our wicker, and the blues pull the blue of the chaise, and it has the greens in it… it really is perfect!
I still have this vintage Coast to Coast Stores garden hose display piece. I’ve had it for so many years. (click here to see it on our former sunporch)
Found it tucked away at a little antique shop by Brainer, MN and just love the color and theme… such a unique piece.
And remember I said we had a bit of an art glass collection here? The beautiful window and a couple of vases came from Ebay.com, but for the most part, this collection has come back from Maine with us. Six or seven of those vases we somehow managed to tuck into a PT convertible one year when we were on road trip out there.
To compliment the art glass on the east side of the room…
I have this antique stained glass window hanging in the west window.
One of the carpenters working on our 100 year old house restoration project could see my taste in vintage and antiques and especially stained glass, as I had them install a couple antique stained glass windows in the bathrooms for me, asked me if I was looking for any more. Well, I’m a sucker for stained glass windows, so I found a home for this one he brought me the next day. 🙂
Below the stained glass is a dry sink with a vintage sink in it a prior owner actually plumbed to work. I don’t think I’ll hook up the plumbing in this room for it, although that would be nice. But even just to have an area for repotting will be great.
Did I ever show you this?
It’s the marriage of a vintage window screen, I found somewhere, and a print mounted on foamcore. My friend had the print in her basement, discarded from the frame it came with, she was only after the frame, so gave the print to me. I actually had it for a year or two until I realized it kind of looked good behind the screen…
So on the one wall in the sunporch that doesn’t have any windows, I hung this for a “window view”.
Our ‘Jewett Mills’ sign, (looks old, but here’s how I made it) denoting the historical mills by our former house hangs on the wall in this room.
The round ‘bird table’ is in the corner of the chaise and rattan settee, (here’s the details on how I painted the bird table)
And the coffee table in front of the settee was one of the first pieces of furniture my dad made. (here is more detail on that piece too)
This room is a fun compilation of furniture, most tied to fond memories… all with a relaxing eclectic theme….
perfect for a 2nd story sunporch.
Now I’ve just gotta go grab a cup of coffee and relax a bit… right there on the chaise!
Here are more before and after posts:
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This post is at Between Naps on the Porch, The Scoop, A Stroll Thru Life
