Making the Best of the Unexpected
The most striking feature of this sun room is one that couldn’t be planned — the exposed sycamore rafters. And, in fact, one of the best parts of remodeling old homes is taking advantage of unexpected surprises.
The room was originally a screened-in entrance porch. The house is a 1920′s Tudor revival in Washington, DC. As you can see in the two “before” pictures, below, the entrance was through the screened porch (between the 2 azaleas in the right image). While there’s no interior before picture, you can imagine the dreary, dark interior of the porch with a low ceiling. And it certainly didn’t make for an inviting entrance to the old Tudor revival.
Exterior Before Pictures
In the “after” image, below, taken in this winter several years after the
remodel was complete, you can see that I moved and emphasized the entrance,
enclosed the porch, added skylights, and created both an inviting entry garden
as well as an enclosed patio (also viewed through the patio door in the first
picture).
While these changes would have made for a striking remodel all on it’s own,
the wonderful surprise was the elegant structure we found hidden by the old
porch ceiling. As seen in the first picture, we revealed the old sycamore
members that supported the sloped roof. I had the beadboard ceiling
painstakingly pieced around the those members and suspended the ceiling fan from
the center of the structure. It’s always a gamble when you remove a
ceiling hoping to find a clean presentable structure. In this case, the
gamble paid off beautifully — the end result was better than I imagined.
Hi, I love the beams in this sunroom. We are about to begin work on adding a gable sunroom to our one storey 1920s cottage. How do you think it would work to add this type of faux beam structure from scratch. Would it be easy / possible? I would love to have the look of uncovering something to add some history and uniqueness to an otherwise, off the assembly line, sunroom.
I love your site, and your design sense.