Revealing Our New Mid-Century Modern Inspired Sunroom

It is week 8 of the One Room Challenge™ and you know what that means – reveal day!!  Today I can finally show you the reveal images for our Mid-Century Modern Inspired Sunroom.

 

 

We have waited nearly 14 years to finally rebuild the screen porch on our house to an enclosed all weather sunroom that we could enjoy at any time during the year.  The construction process started in January and took weeks to complete. 

For the last 8 weeks I have been sharing updates of the process and the challenge of turning this neglected and falling apart room into a bright and sunny mid-century inspired all weather sunroom.

In case this is your first time visiting, here is what I shared over the previous weeks.

There was a week were we showed the long awaited Demo Day.

Then there was the Construction Phase followed by the Messy Middle of construction. 

I also shared the challenge of finding and sourcing vintage MCM inspired furniture and accessories for the room.

In the end, it was the ceiling trim and the painted concrete floors that gave us the biggest challenge. 

However, as I am currently writing this post in a room I have been waiting for a long time to enjoy, the struggles are so easy to forget.

 

 

The final reveal!

Before I show you the final reveal photos, why don’t we go back and visit a few photos of how this room looked at the beginning of the year and before I started sharing the project for the One Room Challenge™. 

Originally this screen porch was dark, dated, and usually too hot to enjoy and often filled with pollen each spring and summer.  Never mind the fact that the dogs usually tried to tear out the screens every summer.

 

 

Every summer though we would still make an attempt to enjoy the room as much as possible and put in a table to eat out here most nights after cooking on the grill. 

 

 

 

In January when it came time to replace all of the old windows on our house, my husband decided he wanted to finally replace the screen porch with a more usable space for year round enjoyment.  For me, I wanted to create a fun and relaxing mid-century room that would serve multiple purposes and embrace the modern architecture of our 1979 built home. 

Joining with other bloggers again in the One Room Challenge™ was the perfect opportunity to motivate us to finish the room on a tight deadline.  In the past I have found this challenge is the best way to stay focused on only one project and totally complete it by a certain date.  

 

First we had the screen porch walls removed and new vinyl walls installed with large windows by a contractor.  

 

 

 After the contractor was done, we started our part of the screen porch overhaul.

Which included painting the dark ceiling and installing trim to create a coffered ceiling look, stripping, painting, and sealing the concrete floors, painting the original exterior walls of the house that are part of the room, installing industrial drapery rods and sheers along each window wall, shopping lots of thrift store for vintage items, refinishing several pieces of furniture, and building a custom sliding barn door light source box to hide the new TV.

And here it is!

 

 

This mid century inspired sleeper sofa is from Walmart.com.  The ceiling fan is from Home Depot. The green ottoman is a last minute thrift store find.  When I got it to the counter to pay for it an elderly gentlemen walked up to me with his college aged grandson and told me that if I had been two minutes later they would have gotten it but I nabbed it first.  Sorry, not sorry.  

 

 

My husband built custom sliding barn doors and light fixture combination box to hide the TV.  Which is really cool and I will be sharing the entire tutorial in the next few weeks. 

 

 

Just a note, at the time of writing this post I am unable to show you the wonderful effects of the LED lights above the custom TV barn door box.  It looks fabulous with all the different colors of the LED strip of lights.  But unfortunately we only got to enjoy it for one night before our large and jealous German Shepherd, Recon, got frustrated with his dad’s lack of attention and chewed up the remote for the lights.  When a replacement remote arrives I will update this post and create a new post showing this fabulous feature. 

 

 

I am excited that my beloved Burke Tulip Table has new place in our home. I found this table several years ago at a mid century modern vintage store in Knoxville. The chairs are from Wayfair.

 

I visited many thrift stores, even a few in 2 other states while visiting family, to find furniture and accessories to use in this room, as well as using things I purchased over the years and gave them a new room to belong.

 

 

This vintage bar car is a Facebook Marketplace find.  The elderly gentleman I purchased it from told me he thinks his mother bought it in the 1940’s.  I am not sure either way but I love how it looks.  The original finish was very red and damaged and as much as I tried to strip it down and refinish it in a lighter shade of stain, the red was just too stubborn and deep in the wood.  In the end, I decided to paint it a fun green color called Parakeet from Sherwin Williams to bring more green color to this side of the room. 

The coasters are fun items I made after purchasing Cricut™ cut files off of Etsy.com.  The silver tray, and the wooden cat statue are both thrift store finds.  The lamp is also a thrift store find but the fun little shade is from Zazzle.com. 

 

 

Even though this vintage record player table has some scratches, I don’t ever plan to paint or refinish it.  It is a fun little table I found several years ago at a resale shop.  The miniature bicycle and the green tiered tray are both thrift store finds. 

 

 

Everything on this side of the room was found at thrift stores and updated in some way.  The retro chair used to be in my daughter’s room and was purchased many years ago at a vintage thrift store which has since moved or gone out of business.  It was pink at one time. 

The tiered table is another thrift store find that was missing a top trim piece and was badly damaged from hot beverages being put on it without coasters.  It took a lot of sanding and time to get this one down to bare wood again and stained in a much nicer color. The lamp is a vintage find as well that was easy to pair with a Home Depot shade.  The table is a great location for my Atomic Ranch magazines. 

 

 

Who doesn’t love an iconic mid century chair! 

Soon after we purchased our modern home, I saw a pair of these chairs at a modern furniture store in Knoxville.  They are knock-offs and not original Wassily chairs which is fine with me because I wanted the look and not the price of the real deal.  Over time though the leather has cracked around the seats on both chairs.  During our project I have been searching for replacement leather parts for this chair and could only find them for an outrageous amount out of China – for more than I even paid for the chair. 

Determined, to use this chair in the sunroom, my final decision was to order some automotive leather repair kits off of Amazon and patch the chairs for now. 

 

 

On an internet search for something else for the room, my husband randomly found this mid-century funny print called “dog spies alien” on Ebay and wanted to include it in the room. The seller is artist Donna Mibus.  Since I had already found several fun and quirky atomic themed prints on Etsy from a shop called Dexter’s Cat, we pulled out the card and ordered all of them.  

 

 

I have said from the beginning that I wanted this room to have some fun things from the atomic age and these prints along with the coasters and the planters add just those little details.   These little pots with atomic symbols look great on the retro plant stand I found at the mid-century modern store in Knoxville called Mid Mod Collective. 

 

 

The last thing we decided to add to the room is custom made drapery rods and long outdoor sheers to soften the room at night, provide privacy if overnight guests sleep on the sofa bed, or to block the sunlight off the TV screen.   

 

 

The sheers were purchased at Wayfair and Amazon. My husband and I made the industrial style rods from conduit poles. 

 

 

In the end, we even installed the sheers over the original sliding glass doors to the kitchen entrance after hanging the first set along the windows.  This way the sheers create a softer look all around the room when they are all open.   

 

 

A part of me is glad that we waited so long to tear down and rebuild our old screen porch.  I am not sure it would have looked this way if I had done it sooner.  Either way, I finally have a bright room and a great table to sit at to blog all year long.  

Hugs,

No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening – it’s painful. But afterwards there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.  Hebrews 12:11