I only have a week-and-a-half left in this year to get work done on the house, so I took a look at my 2025 Master List of Home Goals to see how well I did. Obviously, I won’t get through everything on that list. I never do. Those lists that I make at the beginning of every year are more like a general guide, a buffet table, if you will. And just like you don’t choose every single thing when going through a buffet line, I never get to every single thing on my lists for each year. But they’re a guide to help keep me focused for the year.
At the beginning of the year, one of the biggest things I had really hoped to accomplish this year was to get to the point where we could finally tear down the sunroom. We’ve lived with this room attached to the back of our house for twelve years now, and every time I walk in there, the only thing I can think about is the day that we finally get to tear it down and rebuild. It wasn’t built well. It has no HVAC, so it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The sloped ceiling, leaky back door, drafty aluminum windows, and paneling walls are just depressing. And it has the last and only remnants of any of the original carpet from when we moved in.
If you’ve been around for a while, you know that this room used to be where our “laundry room” was.
But I now have a beautiful new laundry area inside my large walk-in closet, so I no longer have to enter the sad, depressing sunroom to do laundry. (I need to get new photos now that I put curtains on the window.)
I can’t even express to you how much I’ve loved this new arrangement. If you’ve been considering a washer and dryer inside a large walk-in closet, all I can say is DO IT, especially if you’re an empty nester and don’t have to worry about kids or other family members needing to use the laundry area. I have loved the convenience of having the washer and dryer inside the walk-in closet so much that I can say it may be the best decision I’ve made so far in our house. If not THE best, it’s definitely in the top five.
Anyway, the last thing “permanent” item that remains in our sunroom that prevents it from being torn down is the hot water heater over in the left corner in the photo below.
The hot water heater will soon be moved into what is now the hallway bathroom, which will be turned into a storage room inside our master bedroom suite. Once that’s gone, the rest is just junk that I need to go through and give away or sell and my tools and DIY supplies that will be moved into my workshop as soon as I get that arranged.
But this morning, as I was sitting at my desk in my studio, dreaming about our finished bedroom and how that will free up our breakfast room to be used as a breakfast room or sitting room again, and getting excited about our house being put back in order when we finally have a proper bedroom, there was one glaring problem. We still don’t have a proper place for our workout equipment. We went from having a dedicated home gym…
…to having most of those items stored in a corner of the sunroom. I did make room for Matt’s Theracycle in my studio because he can’t go without it. He uses it almost every single day, so not having that available to him is not even an option. I also put my small treadmill in the studio, but I haven’t used it regularly because even though the room is very large, my work tables take up a huge amount of that floor space, and everything feels cramped. As I’ve been working on the draperies for the bedroom, I’ve had to stand on the treadmill to reach a portion of the work table. It’s in the way, and I really want it out of my studio. I also tried bringing my rebounder into the studio so I could use it, but it’s way too big, and I’m out of floor space for it. So it is now leaned up against my desk.
You can see where this is going, right? I need this stuff out of my studio so that I can actually use my studio to work on projects and have full unfettered access to my work tables. And this morning, it dawned on me that the huge sunroom, once it’s all cleared out, is actually a great space for a temporary home gym.
I both loathe the idea of spending time in that room, and at the same time, I’m excited about the possibility of having a dedicated space again for all of our exercise equipment. But I can’t make myself feel excited about actually spending time in that room as long as it looks like it does now.
So I’ve decided that the near future goal is no longer to get the room to the point where we can tear it down. Instead, the near future goal is to get the room to the point where I can set up our exercise equipment turn it into a space that I’ll actually feel motivated to spend an hour or so in there every day actually putting it to use.
Obviously, I don’t want to put much money into this. I mean, I don’t want to put ANY money into it, if I’m being honest. But if it looks like this once it’s cleared out, I will feel no motivation at all to go into this room. This is the picture I took of the empty room when we moved in 12 year ago. I don’t have any pictures of the empty room since then because it’s never been empty since then. So you can add 12 years of wear and tear to this as well.
So I need to figure out the absolute cheapest way to make the room look somewhat presentable. At the least, I’m thinking a coat of white paint on everything will go a long way. I also want to pull up all of the carpet. I think there might be concrete underneath it, and I’d much rather look at concrete than old green carpet. And then maybe I can find some very cheap curtains or sheers or something to cover the windows because it gets very bright (and very hot in the summer) when the sunlight pours through that whole wall of windows.
This won’t be a fun project because there won’t be a huge payoff at the end with a beautiful or impressive before and after. It’ll be strictly utilitarian, and most of all, it will be a temporary fix to an immediate problem until we can get to our long-term plans. But I think this is the best option for now.
It’s a bit disappointing. I can’t even tell you how often I daydream about tearing this room down so I don’t have to look at it anymore. But sometimes we have to work within our limitations on budget, space, and time. This is one of those times for us, so for now, the room has to stay. I’ll try my hardest to make the most of it.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.