Home repair: Best flooring for a sunroom

The 16½-by-14-foot sunroom at the west end of my house is floored with stick-on tiles over plywood, probably lauan, placed over thick planks that were the original flooring. The stick-on tiles are peeling up and breaking. I’ve wondered if the new flooring was put down because the previous owner thought the gaps between the boards were too big. Sun pours in through the windows much of the day on two sides (a maple shades the third windowed side), so I think heat is the problem.

The sunroom isn’t heated in winter. Last year, we put fiberglass insulation under the floor and nailed black building board under that. The porch siding is now Hardie fiber-cement board from the ground up to the windows. There is insulation between the studs, and the inside walls are covered with bead-board-effect wood sheets. All gaps were sealed (no cluster flies or other bugs this year). The ceiling is aluminum strips that look like boards, with no insulation above. The windows slide open to expose screens, and there’s a ceiling fan.

I’d like to remove the ceiling and just paint the support structure and underside of the roof to decrease the summer heat in the room and for the spacious effect. I don’t use the room much in the winter, and I doubt this would affect the rest of the house enough to raise heating bills noticeably.

The problem is, what about flooring? My contractor wants to take up the tile and paint the plywood, which he thinks is nailed down, but I doubt it will wear well, and I don’t think it would look particularly nice.

I’d prefer to take up the plywood, grout between the boards if necessary, and use porch paint on them. Laminate flooring that mimics wood might not survive the heat and sun of summer. I don’t want carpet, because after seeing the dirty throw rugs, I’d think of it as a grime deposit. A flooring rep told me I’d have to use expensive ceramic or porcelain tile because the room’s unheated in winter and sun-beaten in the summer.

Aside from the expense, the depth of tile, or another layer of real wood planks, would interfere with opening the door to the outside. But is sheet vinyl an option? What about linoleum tile, or bamboo flooring? Or are there other options that won’t break the bank? This room is also the main entry to the house, so it does get foot traffic, including a large dog.

I like seeing the view from the sunroom through the window wall of the room to which it’s attached, so putting blinds on the large expanse of windows in the sunroom isn’t an option, plus opening and closing them daily would be a chore.

A: I am not clear about something. Is the roof of the sunroom all glass? If it is, why the aluminum strips? And if it is glass, I am not sure that just painting it is going to reduce the heat in the summer. An effective shield is one of the 3M films. A shade shop may also suggest a gray shade that would lessen the heat gain but that you could see through.

I agree with you that the lauan plywood would not be a great surface for heavy traffic. Once the lauan plywood is removed, you may be surprised to find that the original boards are OK, but if there are spaces between them, the way to tackle those will vary with the size of the cracks.

If you remove the lauan plywood, which is probably ¼- inch thick, will that give you enough room for an engineered or bamboo floor? I would think that either of those would stand up to the stresses of high heat and sun exposure. Ceramic or quarry tiles would be a great option, and they are ¼-inch thick, whereas wood flooring is 5/8 inch or more.