The start of the school season also signals the beginning of the end of the summer. For many homeowners, the late summer and fall seasons are the absolute best times to spend time outdoors, soaking up the last weeks of warmth before the cold weather sets in. Maybe family vacations and other summer activities haven’t allowed you to dedicate time to renovating your home’s outdoor living spaces. If so, these simple projects can be completed in a weekend — and maybe in time for your Labor Day family get together.
Benefits of Adding Outside Living Areas
By adding outdoor living space to your home, you can increase your house’s livable square footage for a fraction of the cost of building more space. Adding another room or addition onto your home will require you to expand the roof, add insulation, walls, and everything else that goes into a home. In contrast, a new outdoor living area can be as simple (and inexpensive) as adding some natural stone flooring next to your back door, a 2x4 pergola at the entranceway to your home, or even a pop-up party tent underneath the weeping willow tree in your back yard.
Outdoor living spaces also increase the “livability” of any home. They allow us to get outside, interact with the natural world, and breathe fresh air. Even homes with the highest indoor air quality can’t quite replicate the freshness of outside air. This is especially true if your home is located in a rural or semi-rural area or is surrounded by natural vegetation. Trees and plants act as a carbon sink to capture the excess carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming. They also actively purify the air by absorbing air pollutants through air uptake in leaf stomata and intercepting airborne particles.
Biophilic architectural design operates under the assumption that human beings subconsciously seek out a deeper connection to all that is alive and natural. While there are many ways to allow your home to “bring in” the natural world, there is no better way to experience nature than through actually being outside. The design and incorporation of several outdoor living areas force you out of the walls of your home. These areas also produce physical and mental health benefits for all the house’s inhabitants.
Lastly, outdoor living areas will also significantly increase your home’s value through the addition of visible improvements to your property. There is a remarkable difference between a small patch of green grass and a living landscape that incorporates natural rock pathways, a gazebo or pergola, and an open-air kitchen.
Here, we offer a few suggestions for creating outdoor living areas that are sustainably designed, aesthetically pleasing, while also resourcefully adding square footage to the living space of your home.
Photo Credit: Brad Goodsell
Salvaged Wood Pergola
The pergola is one of the most common and appreciated outdoor living areas. The overhead beams without a roof allow for an interesting mix of light and shade, and pergolas are lovely places for an outdoor dining room. Additionally, the pergola structure enables you to plant climbing vines that offer a respite from the sun while embellishing your home with flowers and your favorite edible fruits. Some of the best climbing plants for a pergola include:
- Passion vines, which offer delectable fruit and one of the most outstanding flowers
- Bougainvilleas, which are available in a rainbow assortment of colors
- Hops, which have unusual flower heads that can contribute to homebrew creations.
Adding a pergola outside a kitchen door allows you to have a simple outdoor dining room where you can enjoy the bulk of your summer meals. Also, a pergola’s simple structure makes it a great DIY project that can be built using nothing but salvaged or reclaimed lumber. Vintage Timber is one national supplier offering a wide array of unique salvaged lumber, including petrified wood, reclaimed teak, and antique solid timbers. These options will allow you to construct a beautiful pergola from wood that would have otherwise ended up in the landfill. Adding some sustainable outdoor furniture will also allow you to turn your pergola into a multipurpose room.
Outdoor Kitchen
An outdoor dining area might be as simple as putting up a table and some chairs; outdoor kitchens take the idea of outdoor living areas to a whole new level. While an outdoor kitchen will require a larger roofed area than what a pergola offers, it will also allow you to experiment with various design ideas. If you envision having bonfires during the summers, building a fire pit and a wood-burning pizza oven is a great way to enjoy cooking outdoors. Even during the late autumn months when evening temperatures get a bit chilly!
Ooni Pro Pizza Oven. Photo Credit: Ooni
The Ooni Pro Outdoor Stove is a relatively affordable and flexible outdoor stove. It has a quad-fuel function, meaning that it can run on wood, charcoal, wood pellets, or natural gas. Furthermore, this unique outdoor stove is completely portable. It can cook anything from wood-fired pizza to vegetable dishes to roasted fish. The Ooni Pro starts at $599 and is an easy way to create a completely functional outdoor kitchen. Ooni also offers more affordable, portable options with single or dual fuel sources that start at $249.
Photo Credit: Clay Construction
Backyard Living Room
Building an extensive roof for an extended patio or outdoor kitchen might be prohibitively expensive for people on a budget. Investing in costly outdoor kitchen equipment might also be above your budget. However, with a little bit of creativity, you can easily create a beautiful backyard living room for under $100.
Perhaps you have a large shade tree in your backyard but would like something a bit more “permanent” than a blanket for a makeshift picnic or place to relax and read a good book. In this case, used pallets are a great and affordable way to transform your backyard. For outdoor living spaces to feel authentic, creating a sense of enclosure, or beginning and end of the usable space is essential. Used wood pallets will raise a platform above the grass of your yard and let people know the boundaries between the living space and the rest of the yard.
Wood pallets can often be found for free at lumberyards or even at your local hardware store. It is best to search for pallets that have the IPCC logo (International Plant Protection Convention). This marking will ensure that the pallets haven’t been treated with methyl bromide, one of the most dangerous chemicals often used to treat wood.
Once you have created a raised platform, consider adding a couch or reclining patio chairs. Duck Covers offers heavy-duty, waterproof covers for all outdoor furniture types — meaning that you can go beyond those uncomfortable cast iron outdoor chairs. Consider adding some outdoor solar lights that will allow you to spend time outside even when the sun has gone down to use the space at night.
These three simple ideas for outdoor living areas will help you inexpensively increase your home’s square footage — while also helping you enjoy the outdoors while summer lasts.
