Porch floor improvement.

I have a nice sized, covered porch area, river rock, ‘floor’ that I’m looking to resurface. Outside of laying down a deck of wood what are my options? It is level and there are no cracks.

 

blue stone.

 

It was an incredible amount of work, but I have tiled all my porches with porcelain tile. That pebble finish would be an easy surface to tile over.

I had unsightly "settlement cracks" that were aesthetic in nature and not structural. If you live on the Texas Gulf Coast, you may have the same problem because of "swell and shrink" of the black clay soil. If you have cracking, you can stop the cracks from transmitting up through the tile by using Ditra underlayment. If you have no cracking, then you can probably get by with laying the tile directly to that pebble surface. Use of Ditra essentially turns the project into two tile jobs, since the Ditra is first installed using unmodified thinset, then tile is laid on the Ditra with unmodified thinset.

The first two pics show an exact trial fit-up and cutting in some detail areas. You can see some of the settlement cracking, and a Schluter expansion joint in the photos. The third pic shows the largest area of the porch with set tile (ungrouted), and with Ditra visible around the margins. This photo shows staging and prep before the start of another hard day. Fourth pic shows the porch tile completely laid, but not grouted yet.

Once the tile was complete, I installed an aluminum "lanai style" screen-wall system in the openings between rock columns. Hopefully this project will complete by this winter.

 

That’s coming together very well! I have about the same amount of space but only half of it is covered. I never thought about tiling but I’ll definitely look into the full treatment with the underlay. Thanks for the info!

 

Before proceeding with tile, one thing that you need to investigate with professionals is how effectively the thinset will bond to the actual pebble stones. You'll have no problem with it bonding to the surrounding mortar, but that pebble count is virtually solid. Thinset, or any mortar or cement-based overlay, requires porosity of the substrate for the cement to be absorbed, and to create a strong bond. I wouldn't expect river rock pebbles to have much porosity, probably about the same as a granite countertop.

The back porch on my house is the thing that sold me when house hunting. It was screened, but with deteriorating treated wood framing that looked like hell. Total square footage on the "L" shaped rear porch is 575 square feet.

 

Yeah, the rocks themselves are smooth and not what I would call porous. The grout is just grout. And yes, I’d be using a professional for this project. I’m a pro at a few things but laying tile properly is definitely NOT one of them.

 

If the pebble finish was applied later after the slab was cured, then one of those power chipping hammer tools would probably "sheet" that pebble finish right off the slab once you got a start.

 

My goal is a smooth surface. The epoxy idea sounds good. I simply don’t know anyone who has applied epoxy to a surface like this. Definitely something to look into also.

 

On several of my jobs, a theater lobby and a corporate headquarters, the concrete floor was stripped, holes and dings patched, then ground smooth to a fine polish. Both were old buildings with many years of saw cuts and remodels. The final results were very artistic and random,

 

You may want to look into doing an overlay product. This is a very common process with pool builders. There are several companies who can do this. Look up Kool Deck products or Sun Dek. Those are just to different companies to compare. The other nice thing about these products is you can have any pattern done on it, any color and it’s cooler on your feet in the summer.