in partnership with VELUX
When I wrote the first blog post in this series about our plans on how we were transforming the dark living room corner to a bright and light dining space, the thought of sharing the finished space felt so far away. It’s been a long and eventful process, not least because the COVID19 pandemic hit right in the middle of our project. It slowed us down, but only by a couple of months and we were able to move back home only a little bit later than initially hoped for. The house wasn’t quite finished at that point, but it was so good to be back at home!
Room layout and before pictures:
before after
On the left you can see the original floorplan. Although being quite a big space in terms of square footage, it was divided into multiple little rooms and corridors. We knocked down pretty much all of the existing walls to make the most of the flow and feel. We moved the kitchen from the east side to a west facing wall, and the sun-room with a plastic roof was converted to form part of the house. The sun-room had been either too hot or too cold, and was always damp and full of spiders so not usable space for us at all.
The house had a mid century architectural look that we loved, but perhaps because of when it was designed, we were surprised that all the rooms were dark to live in. We’re fortunate that our house is surrounded by beautiful big trees, but they were blocking some of the natural light due to the window positions. Cutting them down was never an option – so we had to find another solution. The old layout had small, high up windows meaning that as well as it being dark, you couldn’t see outside when seated.
Below you can see a selection of ‘before’ and ‘during’ photos:
Maximising the daylight
We loved our new layout and knew it would work so much better for us when living here (which it definitely has!) but we still had to solve our window problem. So we decided to install three big VELUX INTEGRA® solar powered roof windows with VELUX ACTIVE in the new dining space to really maximise the amount of daylight. This part of the house was the darkest (as you can see above) so they made a massive difference to the light levels. We’ve also chosen to add three solar roller blinds in white which have been brilliant on hot and sunny days to help us control the amount of daylight that comes into the room. The smart sensors continuously monitor the temperature, humidity and CO2 levels in the home and will open and close our windows automatically. We can also control them at any time at the touch of the wall switch or using the VELUX ACTIVE smartphone app, which you can also control using Siri and Google Assistant!
After the renovation:
And here it is, our new dining space! It’s not 100% finished as the seating area behind the dining table needs some work. I’m also about to up-cycle the table and change the dining chairs as they don’t work here as well as they did in the old house. But I’m so happy with the room, and how light and airy this room is now!
