Outdoor Rooms

With fall approaching, it might seem like a strange time to talk about outdoor spaces, but I love fall and when the air is nippy, I love hanging out outside, even if it requires a blanket! This past weekend we ate at a restaurant that had a wonderful patio with a waterfall and great lighting, the weather was great for outdoor dining and there is just something so wonderful about the atmosphere of outdoor spaces that makes the food and conversation better. Fall is also the best time of year to be outside, it's not too hot and the bugs aren't swarming!

In my current place, I have a balcony about 5'X14', so outdoor space is precious here.  You approach the balcony through a six foot slider from the living room and a standard french door from the bedroom, so placing furniture is difficult without blocking the doorways. I'm looking for ideas on how to make this space functional and cozy for sitting outside in the afternoons or for coffee with my hubby on Saturday mornings.

As I started my quest for function and flavor in this new place, I thought about my outdoor space in my last home in Las Vegas. I want to share my backyard makeover with you. Not everyone thinks of outdoor spaces as needing designing or decorating, but you can have "rooms" outside that increase the living, dining and entertaining spaces in your home. And the design and planning are done in much the same way.

Before

When we bought our home in Vegas in 2007, we were looking for new construction, because we'd bought an older home before and spent the entire five years we lived there remodeling and redecorating. We had just finished the kitchen when we found out we were transferring for my husband's job and I never even cooked a single family dinner in the new kitchen! So, this time, we wanted it all done, new and fresh so we could just live there and not work there... (some of you know exactly what I mean). 

Before

So, we got the beautiful new home with new carpets and freshly painted walls, everything was brand new down to the last appliance! But the backyard would take us over half the time we lived in the house, to complete! Now, that doesn't mean that we worked in the yard that entire time, it took almost a year to complete the plans and work out the details, but the planning is always the hardest, most time consuming part of the job... right?!

After

We wanted to make sure we had a space for cooking, eating, lounging and "sun worshipping", this is the desert after all and there is a lot of sun to be worshipped. In these photos you can't get a feel for just how big (or small depending on where you live) this backyard truly is. It measures a 65' wide by 29' deep, that is large by Vegas standards, and that berm is nearly 6 feet high. One contractor estimated that it was about eighty-five tons of dirt that had to be moved in order to give us backyard spaces at all!

I added individual patios for each "room" I wanted. I used the same materials for each, but in different patterns to make the "rooms" have their own character. As in every room, the space had to have a focal point, and I put a fountain on one wall to act as that focal point. It is visible from every part of the backyard and is spot lighted so that it becomes an even more important feature as the sun goes down. The sunning spot is a semi-circular shaped patio done by cutting brick shaped pavers and laying them in a fan pattern off the existing concrete patio.

After. 

The color scheme, (just like any room would have), consisted of the red brick wall, which we had to work with, gray of the existing concrete and the tan stucco of the house. I repeated that scheme in the rock wall, pavers and even the furnishings I chose. With the greenery from the trees and flowering plants all with blooms in red, purple and white the yard had a great cohesive feeling, just like the spaces inside the house.

The major point here is this; you can have outdoor spaces that add to the overall function of your home and you use the same design steps as you do for indoor rooms. 1) decide the function you need; 2) take stock of what you have to work with; 3) if you still need a direction, choose some inspiration; 4) make it your own!

I'm going to spend some more time developing my plan for my tiny balcony, I'd love to see what you all have done with your outdoor spaces. Send photos, post comments, give me your ideas!