In my attempt not to be "wordy," perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly enough :-) I would be fine with any of the choices, and am more concerned about maintenance. 1)Painting it white --- when rain and dirt splashes in, as it inevitably will do, may look dirty frequently - and ultimately require more routine work. 2)Stain - requires a sealer every couple of years, I think? 3) White stain would give it a more casual look than paint, but might have same problems with dirt after rain, etc. I know that it's ultimately my decision, I'm just looking for experience w/ the different choices. (I found this site after the fact and cringe so often when I see my prior mistakes explained on here and say "if only I'd read this before doing....." so I value the expertise and try to heed it before acting. Thanks for all your help.)

yeah, this is a pretty good resourse. I'm certainly no expert on painting, but I do know you have to sand or chemically treat concrete to make it stick. Now staining concrete is another ball of wax all together & can be done by DIY'ers. My daughter tore carpet out of a house she had a few years back & stained the concrete. You can pop lines on the concrete & cut the lines with a saw to score the concrete before you stain, makes it look like tile, sort of anyway. Al

Ava, I think the branch manager meant, if the concrete is raw or unpainted - then it is porous, once it is painted with any type of paint including an acrylic epoxy paint it is no longer porous. Therefore the type of sealer I would use would be different than if I had used a stain on the concrete - with a stain the concrete is stil porous but with an acrylic epoxy the concrete becomes non porous. Since that time I talked with the woman who originally put this treatment on her restaurant floor and she used an oil based varathane. However, I am going to use a water based or acrylic based varathane on mine. I have talked to several people and the water based sealer has less of a tendency to yellow than the oil based. Also I am thinking if I want to change the color or redo the concrete floor in the future, then I am thinking it will be less troublesome to redo a floor with a water based product. One point - I have tried using varathane with a roller before and it tends to put little bubbles in the finish, so I am going to use a flat sponge to apply the varathane. The woman doing the restaurant floor used a flat applicator to apply the varathane too. I am going to try my garage floor this week and will let you know how it turns out.

I would leave the white as is plus add white to the stairs so the whole bottom half of the house is white trim. If the view is better with grey on the inside, do grey on the inside. Also maybe gray on the middle area where I see in the photo it is “wood color”.