The House, Part 5: The Sunroom/Playroom

Right from the get-go, I knew the sunroom in this house would become the Munch's primary playspace.  It was a perfect spot to store her many toys in a space that was separated, yet still a part of the main house, meaning I wasn't stuck sitting in some random room with nothing but kids' toys to play with if I wanted to keep an eye on her.  But--another common theme that has run throughout these posts--it needed a lot of work if it was going to BE a playspace.

For starters, it was built over top of the old porch, and had never had a proper foundation, meaning that as the years passed and the rain fell, little by little the southeast corner was settling down, taking the rest of the room with it.  That corner is currently about 3 inches lower than the entrance to the room, not a small bit of settling!  It won't sink anymore, since our contractors did a fair bit of work to shore it up properly...but it is still heavily sloped, and only a full rebuild of the room, windows and all, will resolve that...so it's gonna stay sloped for a while.

But beyond that, it was walled up with dark wood paneling, and even the window trim was the same dark wood.  The stuff had been stained, but not varnished, and, like most other things, it hadn't been cleaned in a long, long time.  Add to that the settling, which had opened up various cracks and crevices all over the place--I could literally see light from the outside through one of the widest cracks near the ceiling--and we had a room that was absolutely unsuitable, as it stood, for a child's play area.

The first thing I did, actually before we moved, was vacuum.  There were thick webs in multiple corners, and there was one critter that the vacuum sucked up that I suspect was a nasty one...brown and long and big.  Potential recluse material.  Yikes.

After we moved and I was ready to tackle that room, I pulled down all the blinds.  And in the process found and cleaned up more webs, but thankfully no live uglies.  The blinds stayed down, and soon found their way to the trash.  They were speckled with goodness knows what that wouldn't come off, and were ivory to boot, so our options became either to replace them with new white ones or to put up curtains.  We opted for curtains.  I'm not a fan of Walmart, for various reasons, but when one wants shorter, simple curtains and rods, in a large quantity (I needed 14 panels), without breaking the bank, Walmart will do the trick.  I found curtains that actually match the base color of our old-but-loved couch almost perfectly, helping to tie the rooms together, and the cost ended up being less per window than blinds would have cost.  

But.  Before we put the curtains up, we had to do the real work.  Paint.  And by paint...oi.  The work was only a little less intensive than the closet.  I wanted to get rid of the paneled look, but tearing it out to put up dry wall was not going to happen, so a friend and I spackled all the cracks, twice--it offered a convenient way to make sure those cracks were sealed, for one, but it also gave the room a smoother, friendlier feel on the walls.  There were also a couple outlets in the room that stuck out from the wall quite a bit, so I took the opportunity to spackle around those too, essentially bulging the wall out just a little around them to properly meet up with the outlet plate, but curved gently enough that you can't really tell.  Then I sanded it all down, cleaned up via vacuum and wet rag, and prepared to paint.

I used the same paint I'd used in the bathroom, which meant needing a primer first...and because the wood not only was super-dark, but also unfinished, that primer got soaked up like nobody's business.  And the paint did too!  I ended up doing 4 coats--2 of primer, and 2 of paint, and I probably could have done a third of each, but I had reached my limit with that room...so much of it was brush and edging that it took much longer than your average room.  I then painted all the trim white--another 3 coats--and caulked around all the windows.  The frame around a couple of those windows was so slanted you could see the insulation between the wall and frame.  I hate to think what the old owner's heating bills were...  As a final measure against invasive species or draft, I caulked the gaps between floor and baseboard, and ceiling and wall.

Then came the furniture set-up...because the floor was so slanted, I ended up taping some shims together and putting them under the various pieces of furniture--about an inch thick shim-bunch for every shelving unit I put in there.  But once that was done, the Munch had some lovely shelves, complete with boxes and bins for her various goodies.  It's become a very friendly play-space, and has already been enjoyed countless times by a number of other kids as well.

Before:  Very dark, very drafty, very dirty, a little scary.

Now:  Yes, it's the same room.  The paneled ceiling is proof, right?  :)

My old bookcase and printer desk are now her toy shelves, while the cloth bins I used to use for my clothes (because we didn't have enough dresser space for both of us before) now serve as toy bins.

From another angle, before:

And now:

Two of 3 toy chests are in here, and hold her stuffed toys and dress-up clothes.  There are two hooks on the wall (look for the upside down butterfly wing at the right) for hanging larger dress-up items.