Al Heavens is a Haddonfield, N.J.- based, nationally syndicated, home-improvement writer and author whose newspaper columns, magazine articles and books have been the first word on remodeling for 50 million readers for more than three decades. He is the author of What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home and Remodeling On The Money: Fifteen Innovative Projects Designed to Add Value to Your Home, and was “The Gadgeteer” on Discovery Channel’s Home Matters program.
When I was a boy, there was a structure in our back yard we called “the grape house.”
My Italian grandfather had built it in the 1920s. Covered with the vines of grapes from which he had made wine in the basement during and after Prohibition, it was, by the time I was born, a place where we would eat lunch and dinner on hot summer days.
Outdoor spaces have become of oversized importance since COVID-19 upended our way of life in early spring. Houses with large back yards, decks, patios, pergolas, gazebos, screened houses, and open porches are at a premium in the suburbs and in leafier city neighborhoods since the outdoors appear to be safer for gatherings when social distancing rules are observed.
There has been a large increase in orders for propane heaters, especially by restaurateurs in areas where indoor dining is either prohibited or restricted, USA Today reported in late September. Demand by homeowners appears to be putting limits on supplies of these heaters, although USA Today reported that Amazon.com and Walmart continue to be reliable sources.
As colder weather approaches, a growing number of homeowners are looking for ways to continue spending time outdoors comfortably.
This has always been possible in the Sun Belt and the Southwest, where decks and patios are used 11 months a year and more, but it is not as easy in northern climates.
In our area there are days and nights when it is wiser to be hunkered down in front of the living-room fireplace than sitting on the patio. When I look at the average daily temperatures from the surprisingly snow-free winter of 2020, however, there were only seven days in January where even a 40,000 BTU propane heater would not have tempted me to spend time outdoors in the evening.
Yet, there were 23 warmish days with relatively mild nights in January. On at least three occasions, I attended family gatherings that were mostly outdoor affairs.
On my forays into the Southwest and Florida for builders’ conventions, I attended events after dark at show houses that had “outdoor rooms.” Because most of these houses were on the expensive side, the outdoor rooms – built as extensions to the home — were elaborate affairs, with gas fireplaces, kitchens, grills for barbecuing, and sofas and easy chairs.
In Nevada and Arizona, these rooms also had heavy floor-to-ceiling curtains that were closed on very cold nights (although daytime winter temperatures in the desert are in the 60s and 70s, they can fall to 30 degrees and lower at night). These same openings had sliding glass doors that could be closed in the summer when the daytime temperature typically exceeds 100 degrees.
More and more contractors in northern areas of the country are being asked to build “outdoor rooms” that can be used in both warm weather and cold.
For some homeowners, this could be as simple as adding a hot tub or spa close to the house for year-round use, which is what my brother-in-law did in Northern Connecticut a couple of years ago (he also has a pool and a screened-in pool house for May through October use).
For others, the outdoor rooms might be as elaborate as those in Las Vegas.
In the book Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design by Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, and Barbara Winslow (Taunton Press, 2002), the authors maintain that “homes create rooms, indoors and out. … Let the location of the indoor rooms shape the outdoor rooms, both the natural outdoor rooms partially created by the site and the new ones created entirely by the building.”
That was the idea behind the outdoor rooms of the show houses I visited in the desert Southwest and Florida. There was a seamless connection between indoors and outdoors that had been part of the original design of the house. In our area, however, where older homes are in the majority, outdoor spaces are rarely original and generally seem like afterthoughts — unless, of course, they are part of an addition that is designed to incorporate them.
So, if you are planning to add space to your house, think outdoors as well as indoors.
Over the summer, on my long walks for exercise while waiting for an end to the pandemic and a return to the gym pool, I have seen many good and bad examples of the use of outdoor space – positive versus negative use, as the authors of Patterns of Home put it.
I will not go into the bad ones here, but the good ones tended to be gazebos and pergolas that might have been for year-round use, although owing to social distancing, I was unwilling to stop by and ask.
Our “grape house” was, in effect, a pergola, with grapevines covering the roof. Although in nearly 90 percent of the cases, pergolas are summer houses, there are ways to winterize them.
Some experts suggest mounting an electric heater on the top of the pergola that can push warm air down to you and your guests. Others recommend using PVC or café blinds to keep out the wind, rain, and snow. Still others suggest fire pits and outdoor fireplaces.
All of these can be removed and stored when the weather turns warm again.
Decks also can be used in the winter using patio or vinyl covers to hold in the heat.
When I was growing up in New England, two of our houses had screened-in outdoor areas that we made heavy use of during the summers.
One was below a bedroom addition. One wall was the exterior wall of the basement, while the other three were screened. Access was through a door in one of the screened walls. I slept there for most the summer.
My father decided to have a door cut in the basement wall so that we could get there without going outside, got rid of the exterior access door, and then crafted a set of easily removable plastic drop curtains to cover the screens so we could use the space during the colder months.
An electric heater was added, and one year we even had Christmas dinner there as the snow swirled harmlessly around us.
In another house, he added a screened porch to a freestanding garage adjacent to the back yard. That space, too, was winterized with plastic drop curtains, and although it was usable in cold weather – Thanksgiving one year, although the temperature had made it into the upper 60s by dinner time – the distance from the house made it inconvenient.
Dad would have fit in well with these uncertain times, especially his belief that outdoor spaces can be altered temporarily to accommodate change in seasons, but only temporarily. When summer returned, those screened-in areas resumed their original purpose of providing mosquito-free places to which we could escape a few weeks of heat in the days before central air.
My next-door neighbor was telling me the other day that a number of people have been admiring our open porches — so many of the houses on our street have had theirs closed in over the years – as spaces to gather while observing social distancing.
I, however, was thinking about building a system of removable screens for the portion of our porch that we use until the mosquitos drive us away from mid-June until early October. The screens would be removed and stored in the garage in the colder months.
If I wanted an outdoor space to use in late fall through early spring, as well as the summer, the hardscaped back yard patio outside the kitchen would be the place to do it – probably a screened-in gazebo that could be winterized along the lines of what my father did when I was growing up.
Right now, of course, we are looking into these ideas for ourselves, since our movement is limited, and our socializing is pretty much on hold.
But consider the parties you’ll be able to have year-round in these spaces when things get back to normal.