Just in Time for Winter: Sun Porch Additions

One of the paint projects we tackled during our paint-athon, was painting this dry sink that had been giving to me by my mother.  I used Glidden's Truly Olive on the piece.  (It's the same paint I used on our DIY dining room chalkboard.).

Here is the before:

It's the best before I have thanks to...you guessed it...the camera card tragedy of 2011.  Just note the hardware and the water damaged top (left front).  The water damage occurred after the branches I used in my Halloween display dropped a few leaves onto the dry sink while they were being stored in the garage last fall.  The leaves sat and sat and started to destroy the top of the dry sink.  Staining the piece was not an option because the wood had large cracks in it and the water damage was deep in the surface of the wood.  I would have loved to stain the piece with a dark espresso stain, but instead chose a green color that we had on hand already and that seemed to work with the floral rug we have in the room as well.

Here is the after:

I updated the hardware using fairly simple oil rubbed bronze pulls from Menards.  They cost about $3 each.  I used a couple coats of Minwax polyacrylic finish in satin to protect the top.  The changes definitely updated the look of the piece and most importantly covered the water stained and cracked top of the unit.

Since we had the polyacrylic and paint on hand already, the dry sink update cost about $15 for new pulls.  Not too bad!  The picture frame resting on top of the unit is an IKEA Ribba frame that we had up at our old house.  I had a recent 16 inch x 20 inch picture printed at Sam's Club for $5.96.  I absolutely love that picture!!

I also picked up some of these string lights from Target on clearance (of course) for $6.48 per package.

And here's the infamous clock that I posted about here:

Bill and I were planning on getting the clock and lights up this year, but time has slipped away and you know what, it's cold out!!  Our sun porch is a three seasons room, so it will turn into a huge walk in refrigerator/freezer in the very near future.  Rather than rush to hang up a clock and lights for a pretty blog picture, we're going to wait until the spring to hang them...you know, when we'll actually be able to enjoy them!

This room has come a long way already.  As a reminder, here was the way the room looked this past May:

And some more recent shots:

With the lights and clock in place next spring, we may never leave our sun porch next spring:).  Or if we do leave, at least we'll know what time it is:)!

I Went to A Garden Party

Remember the floral garden stool from this post?

It was a $17.48 Target clearance find, but

I just wasn't loving the flowers.  I had to make them disappear!

Here she is after one coat of Krylon Dual paint and primer in one.

And several coats of spray paint later, here she is all white and beautiful!

Total Cost: Under $22 ($4 in spray paint and $17.48 for the garden stool)  

I should note that even though I used high gloss spray paint, the resulting finish was matte.  A bit of a bummer, but I'll take it to get rid of the funky purple flowers!

I've got a few more tweaks to make in our sun porch before we close it up for the season!

Sun Porch Updates

We've made a few minor updates to our sun room this summer.  You can see how it looked in May in this post and a little later in this post.

The palm tree that I purchased for $2 at a church sale in May isn't doing so well. 

I ended up finding a couple hibiscus plants for the low price of $2.25 each at Menards a week and a half ago.  We have one opposite the palm tree in our sun porch and the other on our deck. 

When the cat palm officially bites the dust, I'll move this hibiscus inside too. 

Here's how our sun porch is looking now:

I moved up the rug we already had in our basement, and I did a little book shelf accessorizing too.

This cloche was on sale at Urban Outfitters for $10 and the plant was a few bucks at IKEA.

We picked up these antique crates on our vacation in June.  One was from an antique shop in southern Minnesota and the other was from an antique store in downtown St. Paul. They were $10 each.

This watering can was $4.99 from IKEA.

Lots of cheap updates have our sun porch looking good for the season! 

A Whole New Room!

So yesterday, I posted a bit about our garage sale and the room transformation that took place in our sun porch.  As a reminder, here is the room filled with all of our garage sale goods:

Here is the room after all the garage sale items had been removed and placed in our garage:

 

 Still not great.

Here is the room after we did a little more cleaning and organzing.  We removed the sheets from our patio furniture, and now the room is looking much, much better!

We tried a new layout this year.  Last year, we had the couch where these chairs were.  This year, we moved the couch in front of the book shelves for a 'layered' look.  See this post from Emily A. Clark for more about layering furniture.

See where another $2 palm tree would have fit in nicely?  Also, I haven't done anything with the actual bookshelves yet.  The books and decor are completely haphazard at this point.  And I need to get the area rug that works well in this room up from the basement craft area.  Which means I need to go rug shopping for a new rug for the craft area.  Home Goods, here I come!

We actually ate dinner here Sunday night.  Bill and I pulled up ottomans to the end of the table.  It's a nice little kid work and play station too.

The lamp bases are the $3/pair church sale lamps from this post, and the lamp shades were scored at Target on the cheap. (See this post.) The orange-red pillow came with the outdoor furniture set that we purchased at Sam's a few years ago.  The striped pillows are new this year.  They were on sale at Kohl's 55% off for just over $9.  An additional 30% off brought them closer to $6 each and they contributed towards some Kohl's Cash.  (I have a love-hate relationship with Kohl's Cash.  More on that another day.)

I don't have a specific budget for this room, but because it's a room we can only use about 5-6 months out of the year, I'm not going to spend much on it this season.  I love that we have a whole new room to play in now, and so do the kids...even if we need to have a little heater in there and it's mid-May:).