Home Sunroom Makeover with Storage Benches

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a home with a built-in sunroom, but Abby over at the blog chapterthirtyseven.com is one of the lucky ones. A lovely wood paneled, large windowed space existed right off her dining room.

But it had never been used as a sunroom, per se.  It was, or a portion of it was at least, a highly functional laundry room, but the remainder of the room had become nothing more than a repository for various “junk” items, the sorts of odds and ends found in every household which never seemed to find their own discrete space.

It isn’t that the room wasn’t attractive, with its large, wide windows and knotty pine paneled walls, and it certainly allowed in plenty of light. Even when the overflow clutter was removed, it was still, basically a blank slate.

Additional storage was needed, but certainly, there had to be ways to maximize that capacity and still make the area welcoming and attractive. Abby yearned for a way to make the space livable, and set about to do just that.

She set her handyman husband to the task of building her two benches with hinged seating so that they could double as storage bins. Her husband used 2 x 4s to frame and then enclosed the benches with 1 x 6s. These Abby painted in white.

Next, Abby repurposed a couple of lounge chair cushions into padded seating for the benches. She cut them to size and attached them down with the straps that had formerly been used to secure them to the lounges. This inspiration was a great repurposing of exiting resources that saved Abby a ton over sewing them herself. The bright patterns livened up the space wonderfully.

The red tile floor had always been a bit overwhelming to Abby, a situation that the addition of the seating hadn’t really addressed. She decided to bring in a neutral toned area rug, rather than take up the perfectly serviceable tile and replace it with some other option. Besides, the tile worked very well for the room’s laundry facilities in a way other treatments might not. The rug had the added benefit of making the home sunroom that much more cozy.

Abby felt comfortable enough with these changes to realize that she could now use the bench seating for additional dinner guests as the need might arise.

But there were still steps to be taken to fully introduce a true warmth and homeliness to her reclaimed room.

 


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