Well hopefully winter is finally over and we can start on our next big project...the solarium. These pictures will give you a good idea of what we are starting with. The front doorway sits on the concrete floor of the front porch so there had been some rot at the bottom of the doors and the door frames. Unfortunately the previous owner had removed the original doors and thrown them away. We wish he had kept them because it would have been much easier to repair the old doors than get someone to custom make new ones to match the originals...oh well nothing is easy!
After about 1 1/2 years of calls, estimates and basically no real luck we finally found a carpenter to remake the doors to match the original doors. We used some beautiful dried cedar that my father in-law had been saving for about 20 years so hopefully the new doors will be very rot resistant. Richard, our carpenter copied the pattern from the front doors since both sets of doors are visible from the front of the house.
This is one of the new doors. We think we are going to stain them, the cedar is so beautiful.
You can see the pattern in this picture. Two above two long above two. The side lights are the same pattern and they will open on sliding arms that match the front windows. We bought two boxes of NOS brass arm openers out of someones garage and they match perfectly. You can see the pattern is also repeated in the really large side window.(That's a 10 foot ladder in front of the window)

This is the side door that leads back into the house. It opens into the music room. The doors also match these side doors.




The opening covered in plastic is the main opening out to the front porch. There will be two center door and the two sidelights.

There are two of these beautiful, very thin windows, one on each side of the large side window. The glass is only about 4 inches wide and the window is about 9 ft long.


We have begun the paint scraping. This is the only part of the house where the bricks have been painted and I think white will make the solarium really bright and cheerful. We have one section of ceiling that needs to be repaired with new sheet rock. It was originally plastered. This and the doors are really the main big repair jobs in this room. The rest will mainly be cosmetic. We plan to tile the concrete floor and add an indoor koi pond. You can see some of the remaining original lights and hardware.





This is the view out the south window.(Our next door neighbor is "Tara")Actually it is a 1930's southern colonial revival and quite lovely.



This is the view from the west which is actually another set of doors that open out into the rose garden. You can see our chicken coop way down in the back yard. Well if I can get my husband in gear I should be posting some work in progress photos soon. I can't wait to enjoy a nice glass of iced tea in the solarium this summer!