Best laid plans of mice and men often go astray

Plans that have been in the making since we first purchased our house in 2009, that is. We have a cute little screen porch next to the eat-in kitchen that sits directly under our younger daughter's bedroom. We never used it. Ever. Plus, the baby's room was actually several degrees different in temperature from all the other rooms in the house due to the floor being somewhat exposed by the screen porch.

So, the plan was to close it in and make it a 3 or 4 season room. Three years later those plans are actually about to come to fruition. With some assistance from a very good friend and the labors of my husband, this unused part of our house will be getting a lot of attention this fall and winter.

To give you an idea of what we are working with here are some before pictures. It's a small space (about 9'4" square once it is done), but we hope to make as much of it as we can.

  I'm standing next to the slider that comes out from the kitchen and looking towards the deck. That door is teeny, tiny. Like 28" or something ridiculous and it bangs loudly when it shuts, which it doesn't actually do. It just bangs and bounces a couple times.

 

 You can see a glimpse of our new windows sitting inside the screened porch.

 The current ceiling fixture...yeah.

Here are the plans as we have them laid out now:

• Tear out the existing screening, door, and framing
• Remove the ratty, green, plastic carpet
• Remove the siding that is inside the screened porch
• Frame out the new walls with 2x6 wood so we can pack in more insulation (plus the corner beam is a 6x6 so we thought it would be better to have the wall depth match and cover the beam)
• Install HUGE new windows (which will have a nice deep sill on the inside thanks to the 2x6 framing) and a new glass door that is bigger than the teeny tiny one we have now
• Install siding on the outside that matches our current siding (Although, we have discussed changing out all the siding for something with more interest. We're tired of beige and white houses. That is further in the future though.)
• Tear-out of the old plywood inside the room
• Run new outlets and wiring for the room since it was a screened porch and currently has one outdoor outlet
• Move the exterior light next to the slider outside to the deck
• Reinsulate the walls and ceiling
• Drywall
• Paint
• Install electric underfloor heating
• Find some kind of flooring that we can agree with (husband wants tile, I want cork)
• Install a ceiling fan to keep the room cool during the warm months since there isn't any HVAC ducting to it
• Figure out some kind of table and seating arrangement (banquette, benches, round table with chairs, etc.)
• Decorate

Wow, seeing it all written out makes this seem like a much larger project than I anticipated. I did detail some of the changes more than others and many of the single bullets could take many, many, many days of work, like framing and installing all the windows and doors. Plus, we have a lot of decisions to make further down the road. We've already hammered out the details on window and door placement so we're good there. It's the finishes that will most likely take more time at this point. I want to pick something that will flow with the rest of the house, but also be easy to match up for when we eventually remodel our kitchen. Wish us luck and hopefully the subject quote isn't too true with this project.