Rexy's Home - The Atrium (Before and After)

I've had some questions about Rexy's habitat, and it's been a while since I've done a "Before and After" post showing remodeling progress around our house. So in the interest of time and my world of multi-tasking, I'm combining the two and laying it down...

The photo above is now, the photo below was taken just after we got the keys to our house {last August}.

This little ficus tree was in sad shape when we moved in. It hadn't been watered in over a year and we were back and forth about what to do with it. While it would have been nice to save it, in the long run we knew it would eventually grow too large for this space and have to come out later on. So we decided to take it out.

This space is about 6'x6', is screened in on top, and is right off the kitchen. The window on the left is my craft room, and the one on the right is Doug's office. Though this next statement will be obvious, I'm going to say it anyway for the record: Doug did all the work on this space. I stood back and offered my opinion, but he did all the back-breaking-shoulder-intensive stuff.

The window trim and corner pieces all had to be replaced, and there was a lot of patching to be done before Doug could paint. From the start I wanted white because I wanted there to be some awesome light reflection going on out there. It's hard to tell, but if you look at the photo below you can see that we have a strand of white lights going around the top of the atrium. It looks so pretty at night! And yes, that is a cat door leading out to the space but neither of our cats is interested in squeezing through it.

We were undecided what to do with this space, and then along came Rex the Turtle. We {Doug} sectioned off a space for dirt and a little swimming pool, planted some grass seed, strawberry plants and some daisies, and called it good for now.

There's still some potential for a few more plants and creative touches, but it already feels like a sweet sanctuary.

And I'm not the only one who loves it here.

♥