We’ve been hanging out in the sunroom nonstop since a few days ago when we finally got it all set up with furniture. I think we would have made it a priority sooner had we realized what a lovely room it was going to be.

The thing that bothers me most about our floor plan is how closed off the den is from the kitchen and the rest of the house. It feels like a big, lonely expedition to go hang out in there, so I never really do unless it’s specifically to watch TV. But the sunroom connects to both the kitchen and the den. And it has a doorway and an open window into the kitchen, so the spaces feel very connected. So now it’s like the open to the kitchen family room we never had!

Here’s what’s going on in there (in HERE, because I’m in the sunroom right now!)

Here’s another shot, with a cozy family moment involving a jigsaw puzzle:

The leather couch is from my mom. She was replacing this one and offered to us awhile back. It sat in our garage for a long time, then we finally brought it in here, where it sat some more, sort of lonely and unused because it was pretty much the only thing in the room.

I knew I wanted wicker chairs in here and I sort of half-heartedly looked around for some for awhile. Ikea and Target had some for around $100 each that were….okay. Not quite as substantial as I wanted, really, but they would have been okay. And I could usually find some on Craigslist that I would need to spray paint. And spray painting wicker is not much fun.

Saturday I was doing one of my casual “let’s see what they have on Craigslist RIGHT NOW!” things and came across the chairs you see up there. The guy said he had won the set with the chairs, loveseat, and coffee table, and was selling the chairs and coffee table (still new in the boxes) because he didn’t have room for them. And they were pretty much exactly what I wanted, so here they are! We paid $150 for the two chairs and the table. I don’t want the table, so I’m selling it to my mom for $25. The chairs are $200 each on Target’s website, so I’m pretty pleased with our post table selling price of $62.50 each. They’re much nicer than the $100 ones I was considering.

They were kind of a pain to put together:

But once we did, they looked great and are pretty comfy. And they came with nice neutral cushions that I can fancify with some colorful throw pillows:

The trunk that we’re using for a coffee table used to be in our den. But I want a big ottoman with storage for in there, so this came in here.

And, lastly, we went ahead and moved the kitchen table in here, even though we don’t have anything to replace it with yet. The sunroom’s only a few steps from the kitchen, so it doesn’t really matter. Once we have a kitchen table again, I want this one mostly to be for non-eating activities.

There is, of course, much left to do in here. We just bought the paint today and are hoping to start on that tomorrow. And we need to hem all the drop cloth curtains and buy blackout fabric to line them with. It’s been fairly cool and/or cloudy so far this summer, but this room is pretty much unbearable for much of the day once we start getting 90 degree sunny days. I’m hoping curtains the block the morning light will fix that (and then we can open them back up in the afternoon when the sun’s on the other side of the house).

And that overhead light/fan still doesn’t work. So I’m sitting in the dark right now.  So those things are next on the list.