My Old House: The Sun Porch

Well the house is officially broken in. Over the holiday weekend I set off the fire alarm for the first time making burgers. Jeremy said I made the case for my high powered vent hood when we remodel the kitchen. While the house was airing out via a box fan, we retreated to the sun porch.  The sun porch is the only room that's close to done. Don't get me wrong, there's still twenty things that would make great improvements, but it's clean, functional, and looks pretty good.

I really wish I had a "before" picture of our sun porch. It wasn't horrible or anything, but the light fixture was dim and corroded and the door had 5 gazillion coats of paint smeared all over the glass panes. You'll have to settle for a "during" shot. Jeremy had just finished installing the new fan at this point and the porch was full of baseboard scraps, gardening supplies, and plants killed during the move. The sad twig hanging from the Topsy Turvy used to be a tomato plant.

And after:

This is one of the glass panes on the door after some serious time with a razor blade and some Windex. The door was so dirty that my camera treated it like an opaque object in the before photo. In the after photo I had to retrain the focus on the door because it wanted to focus on the floor inside. What a concept! Glass that is CLEAR! Here's the door knob of the same door after 20 minutes of polishing with Brasso and a little more razor work.

The other big change was the electrical items. The damp-rated fan is new and provides a lot more light and we added an outdoor electrical outlet. I love the outdoor outlet because now we can plug in an Ipod dock outside and listen to music on the porch and in the front yard. If this becomes even more of a dining space down the road, we can also plug in a blender, electric kettle, etc. And it's great for a vacuum cleaner too.

We were really nervous about this outdoor outlet because we had to drill through brick. It did take a hammer drill and a drill bit roughly the size of a harpoon, but the install was relatively painless and took about 2 hours to do. I still need to paint the dark gray duct seal around the outlet to make it look a little more streamlined.

I also want to build a legitimate corner shelf for my Meyer lemon tree and replace the screen, which has holes and paint smears. I'm also contemplating a built-in bench or a bistro set more scaled to the small space. The porch is a little over 7' by 10'.  I think a bench and low tables that do double duty as footstools would be neat. Something like the first photo on this blog but with a more seaside cottage look. For now, it's still a great space to enjoy the long summers and mild falls we have here in Atlanta.