If you’re following along on Instagram, then you’re up to speed on our progress in the kitchen. If not, be sure to check out our stories and follow along – the short version is we have 1 week to turn our kitchen into a) something we can live with for a year or two (three? haha) until we’re ready for the full reno, and b) something we can have a video shoot in. Because we actually do have a scheduled video shoot next week, and this place needs some life breathed into it.

BUT, outside of that we wanted to give you an update on our other progress, because it is gettin’ rowdy over here! In case you missed it, while we’re busy on some smaller phase 1 projects of our home, we hired a contractor (Austin Crystal, for you locals) to tackle some bigger, long term plans for our home).

And they have been BUSY!

This is the sunroom, and in case you’ve forgotten what it looked like previously, here’s a reminder:

This entire room is getting ripped out, bit by bit. In working with our Architectural Draftsman we found the original plans to our home, and this room was not part of it. It was definitely an add-on, (the now exposed stucco and stamped concrete floor definitely point to that fact too haha) and we found out from the people who sold us the home that the people they bought it from added this room on and used it for a hot tub (sounds dreamy, though). She told me that this room was a nightmare for them and they always wanted to rip it out and start fresh, but just did what they could to make it useable. We’ve been seeing the same issues they were: leaks, draftiness, and just not digging the angles and awkward construction. Here’s a peek at the NEW floor plan for this area of the home:

You can see from the plans the direction we’re headed. Looking specifically at the dining room (what is now the sunroom) we will be rebuilding the structure with squared up walls and lining the room with five sets of 3/4 glass French doors. The large wooden arched door at the end of the room will be getting the gold star treatment (completely restored, new glass panes, new hardware – the works) and will be installed back in the same spot once the room is rebuilt. The natural light that will be pouring into this space is going to be so amazing. And the wall between the dining room and living room will have an open, double-sided fireplace. We had our drafter make some 3D mockups to give you an idea (although the details are not entirely accurate–this was just the first round of renderings) of how this will look:

Elements like the light fixtures, table, chairs, tile are just place holders until we pick/build the actual pieces we’ll be using, but seeing this makes it so exciting! Just imagine Thanksgiving dinner, with the leaves outside. Summertime barbecues with the doors open, air and sunshine pouring in. Or wintertime game nights with snow piled up outside, the table lined with mugs of hot chocolate while kids make s’mores on the fire. We honestly sit up and talk about the memories we’ll make here as though we’ve already made them. We’ve had a lot of questions about our choice for several french doors rather than one large sliding open door and the truth is it’s just our preference visually (we lean a little more traditional on the modern scale) and mostly we don’t live in the climate for it.

Though the dining room is likely to be one of our most gathered in rooms in the house, the living room on the other side of the wall will have some pretty stunning updates as well. Here’s the living room as it stands today. They got the stone around the fireplace removed and we had someone come measure for a new window here (This entire wall will be a large arched window and we’ll be moving the double sided fireplace to the wall on the right between the dining room and living room).

Like this!

This wall was a little tricky because of how things line up. Originally we talked about having doorways on either side of the fireplace leading into the dining room, but this room extends out beyond the dining room, which doesn’t leave space for a second entry. But we didn’t want the fireplace to feel off balance with the new arched doorway to the right, so we’ll be adding a recessed nook for storage and shelves that mimics the shape of the doorway, creating that balance–very inspired by her highness, Amber Interiors, in this photo:

We’ve talked a lot about when one thing clicks and everything else falls into place and for this project, that was the addition of a balcony above the new dining area/outside of our bedroom (the master bedroom is the one on the left, with a slight bump out).

We already mentioned the issues the roof of the addition was having, so we knew that needed replaced, but structurally and aesthetically I was having issues with the roofline of the addition, too. And if that triangular portion was nixed completely, how plain would the back of the house look?

It all made sense when we decided to add the balcony.

By ripping out the sunroom and rebuilding the dining room, we’ll be able to create a new balcony that will be accessible from the master bedroom and the new bonus room we’ll be creating upstairs when we add a ceiling to the music room (we’ll talk more about that in another post but check out this post to reference what I’m talking about). There will also be a spiral staircase around the back side leading down to a new fire pit area that will sit just outside the arched wooden doors of the dining room:

The exterior finishes here are just place holders and not exactly what it will look like. The arched door for example will probably be a rich, more natural wood tone as opposed to black. There will be sconces incorporated on the wall between the doors to break up the stone. There will be less stone walls and lots more mortar to soften everything. We are going dark for our modern cottage and are feeling very inspired by Jeffrey Dungan.

Everything right now is subject to change, but we wanted to show you the direction we’re heading because we’re full speed ahead on it! They are busy on this huge project and we’re staying busy on our budget kitchen project and life feels full!

To keep up on all the updates, make sure you turn on notifications for @chrislovesjulia on Instagram so you can be notified of new content, and of course you can always check here daily for new posts. Thanks so much for following along and we can’t wait to show you more as things progress!