Before and After French Country Cottage Sunroom Renovation

Scroll through the before and after French Country cottage sunroom renovation which transformed a dark wood-paneled room to a light, bright and airy retreat.

Before and After French Country Cottage Sunroom Renovation

Before

I can’t believe it has taken me this long to reveal my favorite room in our family’s third fixer upper adventure – our sweet little French Country Cottage.  If you missed the before tour, then check it out here.

Here is the sunroom before.

Why the weird long horizontal wood paneled light?

Lot of dark wood paneling.

With yucky old carpet covering a cement floor.

The saving grace was that gorgeous large double window.  I had a vision for this room the first time I walked through this house before buying it.  This would a sunroom with a reclaimed brick floor, white walls, and a gorgeous French Country chandelier.

 

Before and After French Country Cottage Sunroom Renovation

The Mirror

And guess what?  That’s exactly what we got.  Thanks in no small part to one of the most incredible pieces I have ever found.

This 7 x 5 mirror that weighs the equivalent of an elephant (just guessing).

Remember this story?  Let me recap.

Found it on FB marketplace.  Fell in love.  Made an offer.  It was accepted.   Two cars, one trailer, 3 kids in the snow.  Found a house full of vintage items and antiques.

And then the owner said this . . .

Take a look around and make an offer on anything you see.

I’m sorry could you pick my jaw up off the floor?  I had bought half the house before Zach arrived with the trailer.  Good things we had two cars.

Oh it’s just so pretty.  Per the owner it was made out of a large antique door.

My sweet kids don’t blink an eye when we tell them we are taking a trip to pick up some “stuff” and then ask one to ride an hour with a vintage bench over her head and another an antique dough bowl in his lap (all safely secured by the way).  #reallife

 

Before and After French Country Cottage Sunroom Renovation

Antique Door

Back to our previously scheduled program.  After ripping up the carpet one of the first things I did was refinish this incredible antique door I also found on FB marketplace.

I removed the window panes, used wood filler in all the holes and lightly sanded the whole door.  Lastly I sealed it with a satin polyurethane.

I had Plexiglas installed for the window and went in search of some vintage hardware.

 

 

Before and After French Country Cottage Sunroom Renovation

Paint

My fabulous Momma!

We painted this room Mayonnaise by BM.  It is a warm, vintage white.

It took 3 coats on top of the primer in order to fully cover the wood paneling.

 

 

Before and After French Country Cottage Sunroom Renovation

Reclaimed Brick Floor

Those of you who have been around here know this story as well, but this reclaimed brick has been the name of the game in this fixer upper.

I plan to do an entire post on all the ways we used a pallet of reclaimed bricks in this house.  The BEST BANG for our buck ever.

We rented a wet saw and cut each brick by hand.  For the floor we cut the wide faces of the brick.  For the kitchen backsplash we made thin brick by cutting the smaller faces.

Sweetest little helper!

Some girls have coffee dates.   My sis-In-law and I were having a brick floor laying date.

Do you love that under the carpet was a laminate “faux brick”?  Haha.

I am going to do another post about 3 Ways to Mortar Wash Brick and will give all the details as to how we have done ours.

This particular experiment was the heaviest wash.  Here we smeared the mortar over everything, and then I only scrubbed off areas of the bricks (Unlike the foyer floor where I heavily scrubbed the mortar into and off of the whole brick.  See the foyer reveal here). And then the kitchen back splash I did a “messy mortar” instead of a wash (see the kitchen here).

We have gotten a good system down where Zach applies the mortar and I scrub.

Mortar washing techniques are SO fun and definitely have an art to them.

The other thing I didn’t do in here was use spacers between the bricks.  I specifically wanted to trial what it looked like to give an authentic “old” appearance to have the rows a little wavy and not perfectly straight.

Wow that was a lot of work.  Now I’m tired.  Speaking of tired Lily falls asleep in this room all the time.

Why the piano bench?

This picture kills me because every single part of her body is on the comfy blankets EXCEPT her face.

 

Before and After French Country Cottage Sunroom Renovation

After

And without further ado . . .

Come on in to our sunroom!

Let’s stop and take a moment to appreciate this amazing door.

This sliding bolt is from Van Dyke’s Restorers which is my go to for door hardware.  I have bought a LOT of door hardware from them over the years.

Our Vintage Victorian fixer upper I bought replica Victorian crystal door knobs and plates for the whole house, and they were stunning.

All of my front door hardware has been from them as well as vintage door kicks etc, vent grills, window hardware, cremone bolts, door hinges . . . I could go on and on.  Check out Van Dyke’s Restorers .

Welcome to my favorite room in the French Country Cottage fixer upper.

Let’s wander around a little.

Oh that mirror.  How I love you.

When we build I have this mirror designed to go onto the wall of our dining room that will be styled very similarly to this room.

See all those dried flowers on the top of the mirror?  Those are all bouquets I dried from the casket spray at my best friend’s funeral.  Heather died from breast cancer this past November (read my tribute here), and one of our best friends – Kate – is a wedding florist and did Heather’s casket spray.  They were going to get thrown out, so I collected some and dried small bouquets and arranged them on the mirror.  <sigh>  Beauty out of ashes, but boy that beauty still hurts.

Ok moving on before I become a puddle of tears.  I found those marble plated crystal and brass antique candle holders at a thrift store, and that ladder was my grandfathers.

I love all the painting stories it has to tell.

I’m doing a fun post next week where we will tour my “office” (or my desk if you will), and I am going to show you all my home office essentials!

 

Before and After French Country Cottage Sunroom Renovation

Before and After Slideshow

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Shop My Sunroom/Office