What I wound up doing is changing the column type to int in the database then I went into the edmx and updated model from database, then I went and added a enum type and then changed the column type in the edmx designer to be of type of that enum. Reupdated the poco's and everything Works good!
与恶龙缠斗过久,自身亦成为恶龙;凝视深渊过久,深渊将回以凝视…