Last time you saw our sunroom, it looked like this:
Now it’s starting to look more like this:
Forgive the grainy iPhone photo — it was the quick snap I sent to my parents before Richmond turned into rain city yesterday — but you can see we’ve made solid progress lofting the ceiling. A professional framer came out this week to ensure the roof structure was sound. We’ll cover the ceiling work next week after the electrician finishes turning the loose wires into junction boxes for two fans.
Today’s post is about the floor — specifically, our plan for the sunroom floor.
We’ve debated several approaches. The simplest would be to stain or paint the concrete, like we did in our previous sunroom. That method is straightforward, affordable, and can look great.
At our old place we started with a semi-transparent “Tuscan Yellow” stain and later painted it a glossy chocolate when we wanted a change. The process is easy and inexpensive, which makes it tempting as a quick update.
But the concrete in this sunroom has stubborn glue stains from the carpet we removed, so semi-transparent stains were off the table — they would just reveal every imperfection. Painting would hide some flaws, but the brick border around the room has glue residue, nail holes and gouges from the old sliding doors that look rough up close.
Another concern is traction. The concrete can be slick when wet — Clara’s feet get soaked playing with her water table or kiddie pool, and she’s slipped a few times. We want a surface that performs outdoors and provides grip, so rough-textured patio-style tile made more sense.
Crucially, we also learned that painting the concrete would block any future tiling. Paint prevents thinset from bonding to concrete, which means a painted floor becomes basically untileable unless you remove every trace of paint by hand — a huge and unpleasant task. Because we want to keep the option of tiling open, painting felt like a permanent compromise we weren’t willing to make.
So we went tile shopping.
We admired several large-format tiles, but once we did the math — our sunroom is over 200 square feet — the pricier options didn’t fit our budget. Then we noticed a Labor Day promotion offering 20–25% off total purchases and 35% off tools and supplies. That discount pushed us to look harder for affordable alternatives.
Our criteria were clear: the tile needed to be outdoor-friendly (the tile pros recommended porcelain for exterior-suitable durability), textured to prevent slipping, and much more affordable than the top-shelf samples we initially loved.
- Outdoor-friendly porcelain
- Rough texture for traction
- Lower price than the large-format premium tile
We bought sample tiles of three options and laid them in the sunroom to see how they played with the deck’s wood tone and how well they would highlight the subtle step up into the sunroom. Although the names reference natural stone (slate, limestone, etc.), all three were porcelain tile styles modeled after those materials — the porcelain recommendation came from the tile pros who said it’s best for outdoor use in our climate.
Our favorite was Mountain Slate Iron. Its deeper tones and brown undertones complemented the deck better than the cooler, washed-out options. It also had the most texture, making it the safest choice when wet, and it happened to be the most budget-friendly. Those factors convinced us to commit to tiling now rather than postpone it.
So last night we placed our order.
The tiles won’t be ready for pickup until next week. We plan to finish the ceiling — install beadboard, put in the fans and paint — before installing the tile, so we’re not trying to protect any new flooring while doing overhead work. The sale brought the tile price down from $3.48 per square foot to $2.61, which helped justify moving forward.
Clara was excited about the shopping trip — she kept pretending to call Elmo on her toy phone while wandering through the display showers — so we’ll count that as a small, adorable endorsement of our new floor choice.