Outdoor Living Spaces: Part 2

Site-built King Trusses create a large, open outdoor room off a small ranch house

 So, in celebration of the end of winter, we are looking at those wonderfully special living spaces some of us are lucky enough to have attached to our houses - decks, porches, patios and screened porches. We may not be able to use them right now, but once it warms up again outside, the sun shines during the longer days, and there's no more snow and ice, we will be using our outdoor rooms and loving them!

Adding a glass door and private outdoor balcony space off a bedroom

This is the second part of a series about outdoor living spaces. Click here to see the first post that talked about decks and balconies- and the photo above is another master bedroom balcony view that I should have included in the Outdoor Living Spaces: Part 1 post.

A screened porch tucked away for privacy in a village- Bonus Points for any locals who can tell me where this is!

Screened-in porches are special. They tend to be on the private side of the house, accessed by glass doors from a family room, hall, or kitchen/eating area. They have "walls" (or at least posts and screening) and a roof/ceiling to protect the space from sun and rain- but they are so different than sitting in your living room. They are truly rooms that allow one to feel protected in and yet feel like you are outside breathing the fresh air, hearing the birds or the frogs...  Different treatments can give different effects: flat ceilings vs. vaulted ceiling following bottom of roof rafters; painted wood vs. stained wood; various guard rail designs- wood/cables/low walls- or no guard rail; landscaping and stairs and doors and how it is connected to the yard...

Natural finishes, soaring ceiling, and a "repeated squares" motif for the guard rail

 Screens can also be designed to be removable, and swapped with glass panels, to extend the months one can use the space into cooler times of the year. One must be careful though, when designing a flexible space such as a sun/screen porch that the sense of being outdoors isn't taken away by too much solid wall and too little glass or screen. (There is this propensity that if something is good, it would be even better to do more of it. But lots of times a screen porch should just be left a screen porch, once you change it into a 3-season room or such, it loses all it's special outdoors-y charm and it can begin to feel just like any other room in the house.)

A screened porch with change-able screen/glass panels so it can become a sun porch

One of the cool extra benefits of a sun porch - besides being able to sit in the warm, sunshine on an early spring or late fall day- is that that sun can give the house some free solar heat gain. This is the simplest of passive solar spaces: just allowing the sun to enter through south-facing glass (yes, it is important which direction your sun porch faces!) will passively warm the space. With some designs I place this screen porch/ sun porch off a large interior space, like a living room, so that when the (french) doors are open between the house and the porch, the sun room actually adds heat to the house. This flexibility is especially wonderful in a small house- it's a free extra room for most of the year, at a much lower cost. (because remember, it's not heated or insulated - and sometimes folks think you should add those things and make it usable year-round - but then you are losing the special outdoor room! (see side note above regarding more of a good thing)

Enjoy the rest of winter! (and dreaming about the coming spring)