A few more Sun Room Updates

We’ve done quite a bit of work in the sun room over the last few months – nothing amazing or particularly hard – but it really has come a long way and I wanted to show you how this little extension of living space has evolved since we moved in.

When I blogged about replacing our windows you may have noticed in the after photos that we added curtains. I say windows but really…our “windows” aren’t actually windows – they’re sliding doors.

Sometimes…ok – most the time – sliding doors aren’t great looking. Often times they’re old, aluminum, yellowed, rickety, or they make a lot of noise every time you open and close them, and everyone would really like to have french doors instead. Right? It’s what you see all over those home décor magazines and design shows – big beautiful windows that let in tons of natural light or French doors left wide open, leading you out into a perfectly manicured backyard. #housegoals

But sometimes you live in an apartment (we have) or sometimes, like in our case, French doors just aren’t in the budget (it wasn’t) and those #housegoals just isn’t your reality. So you opt for the budget friendly option and install sliding doors.

We did and they ain’t all that bad now, are they?

Remember in this post where I told you that the quotes we received ranged anywhere from 8k to over 30k? I remember being about 4 months pregnant and gasping when the rep quoted us 30k to replace our sliding doors with all-wood french doors. Triple what vinyl sliding doors cost us!!! We promptly told him thank you but hell no – we have kids to feed.

As you already know, we went with the sliding doors but here’s how I make them look like we paid 30k without actually having to:

If installing new – go white. We had to have a different color on the outside per our HOA requirements so we paid a little extra to have the frames white on the inside. The white will draw the eye away from the window itself and allow you to focus on the view beyond. It’ll also make the area look and feel larger. I toyed around with the idea of black frames because it’s super on trend right now to have black framed windows against stark white walls, but unless you’re dealing with actual windows or French doors, white is your best bet.

Always add curtains! Throw a curtain rod above your sliders just like you would a window and I promise, you’ll be happy you did. Just remember to hang your curtains high and wide! I did this in our last apartment – even with the vertical blinds that were already there – and it made such a huge difference. Here’s an old picture I dug up to show you:

It took a little while to get around to adding curtains to the sun room mainly because our configuration is a bit odd.

Our sliders go floor to ceiling (there’s no wall space to install a traditional rod above the slider) and then we have a beam running between each set of sliders. In addition to the tricky configuration, each set of sliders are 96″ wide which made finding a long enough rod that wasn’t $$$ even more difficult.

I ended up going with this Ikea rod and these wall mounts that we attached directly to the beams but for those lucky people who have normal sliders in a normal configuration, any curtain rod will work! We used the Ritva curtains also from Ikea to save on cost and these curtain rings from Amazon. It was by far the cheapest way to go to dress this many “windows”. Plus it can withstand my 8 month old trying to climb the curtains sooo there’s that.

Aaaand for the easiest DIY ever…if you ever buy a pair of curtains that are too long, this no-sew hem tape is MAGIC! I literally just hung the curtains up and trimmed off the excess fabric while they were still up and then used the hem tape to finish them off for a clean hem line.

A few other updates we made in this space:

The water damaged drywall by the laundry room got patched:

The entire room got a fresh coat of bright white paint – Super White by Sherwin Williams and the yellowed recessed lights all got sprayed white too – Rustoleum White in a Matte finish: