We spent quite a few weeks looking for rental in Colorado. Our demands are high. The landlord has to be OK with us bringing in two dogs, there needs to be a large yard, the rent needs to be reasonable, and the place needs to be kind of cool. We are always attracted to places that are not ordinary. And renting an “regular” 2b/1b apartment is never an option to us. As you could imagine, there were only handful of places we contacted. And what sold our current rental to Slav, who visited the prospective rentals in person, is this sunroom.
This sunroom was built as a greenhouse, attached to the southern exterior of the house. It spins more than half of the length of the house and meets the garage on its side. When our landlord bought the house 15 years ago, it was only one story in height. He was impressed how warm this greenhouse got in Winter, and therefore decided to extend it all the way to the roof of the house for heating purposes. Even in a snowy winter night, it is above freezing. When it is sunny outside, which are most of the days here, the sunroom warms up quickly and can get to 80 degrees in Winter and over 100 degrees in Summer. It helps to reduce the heating cost in winter.
A fan is installed between the sunroom and the garage to distribute the heat accumulated in the sunroom. When it is above 75 degrees in the sunroom, the fan turns on automatically and pumps hot air into the garage. We leave the sliding door open on the other end of the sunroom so cool breeze comes in. A set of stairs leads to the patio above the garage, which also helps the hot air to escape.
Because the sunroom stays warm at night, it is possible to grow flowers and vegetables year-around. We are told that one of the previous tenants, a lady who lived here for 14 years, grew her own vegetables and herbs in these rock beds. In March it still snows in Evergreen. But the days are getting warmer, and we already saw seedlings peeking out of these beds. The first a couple days we got here, I have planted Morning Glories and Moonflowers, and hope to see them sprouting soon.
At the end of this sunroom, it is the front door to our ground floor apartment. We created a small mudroon under the stairs to keep our shoes and coats out of the main living space. We are also able to fit Slav’s tools under the stairs.
We have already enjoyed a few evenings here star gazing in our camping chairs. The sliding door lets in cool breeze and the flowers and herbs we are planting in these rock beds should provide additional fragrance in summer nights. North Carolina gets was very humid in summer and has lots of mosquitoes. We expect the summer nights here to be cool, dry and bug-free, which are ideal for dining out in this cute sunroom of ours.
As you can tell, I love this sunroom very much. I love it so much that I shot a separate video for this little space and the attached patio. Do you have a favorite patio set for two that you can recommend?
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