Originally Posted by lawgolfer (Post 2302756)

A lanai, whether screened-in or with sliders and screens seems like a great idea. In reality, they rarely get enough use to justify the space they take up.

We removed the slider from our living room to the lanai and finished off the opening. Next, we raised the floor of the lanai by topping it with 6" or so of new concrete and extended the flooring of the living room into the new room. There was no need to remove the existing concrete pad.

The exterior structure of the lanai was removed. A "knee-wall" was installed and the room framed and finished to match both the outside stucco and the interior sheetrock. The new exterior wall has 3-piece windows, the center part being fixed and the two outside parts being "sliders" with screens if we want to open them. The existing heat/air was extended into the new room. The new windows are covered with roll-up, powered, shades.

One end of the lanai was made into our TV room with a large-screen TV and reclining "theatre chairs". I'm almost embarrassed to admit that, unless we are in bed, we now spend 90% of our time in the new room. Previously, we didn't spend 1% of our time in the lanai.

The sliding windows serve as the required emergency exits. If you want a regular door, that is easily added at the end of the lanai opposite the large-screen TV. If you use a grill, you can have a small slab placed outside that door.

The conversion of the lanai into a useful room was neither cheap nor was it overly expensive as it all sits on the original "footprint" of the house and under the original roof. What it did do was to give us many additional sq. ft. of useful floor space.