MOST AWKWARD shaped living/sunroom/kitchen ever!! HELP!!
stevennik
4 years ago
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sheloveslayouts
4 years agoRelated Discussions
Novice to Use Sunroom for NEW year-round kitchen garden
Comments (4)I think if you had some small shelves that are about as tall as the window sill you could grow plenty. If the shelf ended about 10 inches from the sill the plant would be in the sunshine most of the bright part of the day (assuming its planted in a 10 inch tall pot). You would want lights overhead of the plants during the evening when winter days are the shortest. Plenty of plants will survive without the lights but they will barely grow and probably won't bloom and fruit during the shorter days. You could use regular adjustable floor lamps with the bulbs set within a foot of the top of the plants (the closer the better) and either use grow bulbs or fluorescents. Lighting is tricky. People seriously growing under lights use big bulky expensive lamps that won't work well in a home-ey sunroom if you want to also use it as a reading/sitting room. I would at least start out with something simple and expand from there as your experience grows. You'll probably have better luck growing a cherry tomato in a pot outdoors in the summer and then bring it indoors for the winter and toss it out when it goes down hill - it may last all season but they usually get disease or insects before March. I can never get regular tomatoes to ripen when I bring them inside but cherry tom's do fine. Most of the herbs should do fine except the rosemary - in my experience it hates living indoors. Garlic is a seasonal plant that you plant at one point in the year and then harvest half a year later. It is not something that you can harvest off of all year long (there will be a plant but there won't be a bulb). Garlic chives should do fine in a pot indoors though and the flavor is similar. Asparagus will be tricky since the plants get 6 feet tall and about 4 feet wide and they pretty much like full blazing sun - I move them to the outside plant list. Carrots might work but they take more than one season to size up for me. You could grow seedlings all winter that you could then plant outdoors in the spring. Orange trees and other citrus would work and most will stay small when grown outside of the tropics. They can get buggy but if you move them back outdoors in the summer you may not have a problem. Most citrus bloom during the winter or very early spring and then it take all year for the fruit to form and ripen - making them a great winter time crop when no other fruit ready to harvest. They don't need high heat (I keep mine just above freezing!) but they do like higher humidity than what most people have in their homes....See MoreLooking for feedback on sunroom & breakfast nook layout
Comments (9)Sounds pretty unanimous; we had better rethink the 2 separate rooms thing. Our original concept actually was to connect the two, but then DH had the bright idea to make the window into french doors, and having that entry into the sunroom seemed a better idea than having to pass through the nook to get there. Plus it allowed us to close it off for HVAC reasons. In addition, it made the roof a bit simpler/cheaper. But that's probably not worth the savings if it looks dorky. One detail I didn't include is that the nook will be 2 stories high, and the 2nd story will be a sitting room off the master with the same window configuration. The sunroom will likely have a radiant heated tile floor (we've got them in our master bath and kitchen and have grown rather addicted). SOOOOO, what if we modify as follows: --connect the two rooms by adding a wall parallel to the existing outside wall, making the far right window in the nook into a doorway (roughly 7' wide), so there's a hall about 4' long between the 2 rooms. --keep the existing french door from the FR, as that's the easiest entry. Open hallway on both sides? I don't really care about feeling like the nook's separate, but should I do something to make it more aesthetically pleasing? Perhaps columns? As for the advice on slider placement, I haven't given a lick of thought to furniture placement (we were just focused on wanting all those windows!). I'll mull that one over. Wouldn't a slider look odd if it weren't centered, though? Thanks to everyone. It sure helps to be able to bounce this off of others!...See MoreWill a Sunroom off sunny kitchen make kitchen dark?
Comments (11)With poor quality windows, insufficient HVAC, and no insulation, the typical "sunroom" like mine will be nothing but an oven attached to your home that darkens the interior. Good quality triple glazed windows are expensive, as is spray in foam insulation, and the extra HVAC system needed for a sunroom. That's why this fall's project is to remove the wall between it and the home and rebuild it as an open room that is an integral part of the house rather than as a separate room. I will have more windows in it than the rest of the house, but less than when it was a sunroom. The windows will be of higher quality, and there will be wall space with actual insulation in it. We are having to redo the 30 year old HVAC, so it's not a stretch to have the additional space calculated into the new requirements. We also had to pour a new footing and rework the roof and it's support with LVLs and I beams in order to remove the wall between the current sunroom and family room. It's not a cheap project to do this, roughly 30K for materials alone with our DIY labor (labor would probably be at least 40-50K in addition to the material costs), but I'd recommend that you think of doing something similar rather than doing a "sunroom". It will still darken your kitchen to make it the interior room rather than the exterior one, but if there isn't a wall between the two, and it's one large space, it can keep most of it's brightness without the direct light. And, as any addition, it's a lot more expensive to remodel than move if you can't DIY the project. If you are looking at doing such an extensive remodel to your home, take that 100K that it will cost and see what you could buy with it after you've sold your present home. Major remodels are only for people who are going to live in their home long term and who don't care about spending extra money for their comfort while living there. Remodels lose money if you look at it from a purely financial standpoint rather than the intangible benefits one....See MoreKitchen eating area is changing to sunroom!
Comments (16)Lisa- Thanks! I'm really excited about the table. Your kitchen is going to be amazing and a dining room that feel like a sunroom....what a great space! Stephan- That is so nice! My love of CL and thrift store finds is the key to staying on budget (LOL) so vintage is a perfect fit. Rebunky- Yes! Too much for the kitties, there will be no seedlings in sunroom. Especially on the floor...but that table is cute! Love the bunnies...and I think a little Peter Rabbit fabric and maybe a few planters may find their way into the remodel. Nothing too much, but just a little whimsy :) I don't know if I mentioned this (long week) but my SIL and her husband have very graciously donated their old cabinets for our kitchen remodel. They're white (which I like) but our uppers are wood....so we may be painting the uppers. My mom is ecstatic! So, I guess it's a good call, but we are keeping the wood trim and some detailing and will probably use the vinyl "wood" floor planks or tiles. (Shhhhh....don't tell Fori.) LOL But we will still have lots of colors, fabric and overall fun in the finished kitchen. And the dresser will have an even better location! More to come, later...I have to redo my little floor plan, but now it's back to gardening!...See MoreManon Floreat
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