Outdoor Living Spaces

Kimberly is a Senior Designer who works with Margery Wedderburn Interiors...She wrote this blog awhile back and I am finally sending it out into the blog world!

Outdoor Living Spaces

My husband & I want to add a deck to our house. We have lived in our house for over a year, and can not believe we still haven't had the deck put on yet! Here's a picture of how it looks today with the doors barricaded closed (we'd love to have direct access to our playground, instead of going all around the house!):

What's stopping us (besides the huge expense)?

Decisions! There are so many options and features to consider! Real wood vs. Trex engineered materials, railing designs, staircase(s), outdoor kitchen, screened in porch areas, Fireplaces. I have been gathering images of decks I like the look of and what I think will go well with our French Country style house. Here's how I dream it could look:

 

photo credit: Lewis Aquatech, www.lewis-aquatech.com

The limestone, the iron railings, the beautiful hardscape with lighting along with the guitar shaped pool my husband would love! That is not in the budget today. So we will phase our project. Back to reality. First phase is just the deck. 

So here are some more realistic designs to consider:

www.trex.com

The radius design creates wonderful multi-level areas separating a living room seating area from a fire pit gathering space. Trex is a great option for material because it is maintenance free and environmentally friendly. It is manufactured from recycled materials. They have a great website (www.trex.com) full of information on how "green" the company strives to be.
According to the website, 3.1 billion recycled grocery bags were collected for use to manufacture Trex products in 2010. That's is something to appreciate while sipping on a glass of chardonnay on my new deck.

If we kept with the materials already used in our house, we would have a design with stone and brick, the following is a great inspiration image. I loved the covered porch with ceiling fan. The stone archways are beautiful and really give the overall house design solid visual balance.

www.architecturaldesigns.com

Recently I sat down with a local landscaping firm to discuss our project. They had lots of great ideas and designs. My favorite has a double level outdoor fireplace, outdoor kitchen, and a porch area with automatic screens that can be lifted or lowered with the touch of a button! 

www.mchalelandscape.com

Here's a close up of the beautiful wood deck. 

www.mchalelandscape.com

Something else to consider is whether the underneath of the deck is completely finished to be weather-proofed. This is a pricey option but allows for the space underneath the deck to be used as an all year round patio area. A big trend now is to have outdoor TV's installed. 

www.houzz.com

I know my kids would like that, but I think it defeats the purpose of enjoying the outdoors! No matter what we end up building, I will appreciate the beautiful peaceful setting of my backyard.