Use your sunroom or screened porch year-around with fold away windows

Sunrooms are a great idea but unfortunately, many are only used three seasons of the year. Thanks to NanaWall, a company which makes windows that are like walls that actually fold out of the way, our sunroom is something we use year-around.

Instead of opting for traditional French doors or a sliding patio door, when we built our home we requested that the builder install a patio door that would accordion-fold to the side so that it would virtually disappear, leaving nothing but a huge opening to our sunroom.

That's exactly what we got from NanaWall.

Our sunroom is off our great room and has a door to a porch leading down into our backyard. Here it is in the summer, looking into it from our kitchen and great room. See the actual step-by-step installation here.

Copyright Norman Sizemore

Copyright Norman Sizemore

Naturally, in the summertime, we're in this room all the time. The windows in the sunroom open wide, letting the air flow through the house. The NanaWall accordion folds to a neat, unobtrusive stack on the right side, along the wall of our great room so it is entirely out of the way. By installing the NanaWall, we significantly increased the square footage of the great room when the door is wide open.

In autumn, when the temperatures start to fall, I bring in my outdoor plants to keep them over the winter. Even then, we still live in this room. A day doesn't go by when we do not have the NanaWall open.

In the winter, when Chicago gets its worst weather, we're still in this room. We have radiant heating installed in the floor and it warms up the room very nicely. If we didn't have the NanaWall, which opens up the sunroom to the rest of the house, we probably would not be using it on a daily basis in the winter like we do. Only when the temperatures fall below zero outdoors, do we keep the NanaWall closed during the day to maintain heat in the rest of the house.

Then, in just a couple short months, we'll be looking at spring temperatures again, when the room will once again become the centerpiece of our home. Installing a NanaWall was one of the best decisions we made when building this house.

Copyright Norman Sizemore

Do you use your sunroom year-around? What would make you use it more?