outdoor kitchens
Fontana Forni (Florence, S.C.) makes countertop, woodfired pizza ovens. The Margherita Countertop, the smallest model…
When you target the high-end custom pool market, you have to be prepared to work with clients who like to change things along the way. It can be a real challenge because it causes delays, re-engineering and sometimes removing work you've just installed. More than anything, you have to remain patient, constantly listening and explaining the ramifications of changing things to the client. It helps when you have a good rapport from the start. All of that was true and then some for the project pictured here. It's located in an upscale neighborhood in Sherman Oaks, Calif. The property is about a third of an acre on a relatively flat corner lot completely surrounded by tall fichus hedges for privacy.
As this strange time keeps on rolling and builders' phones continue to ring off the hook, Watershape University (WU) is serving our audience with our dynamic Wolfpack Webinar Wednesdays series of online educational offerings. When we started down this path, admittedly it was something of an experiment, but now with three months of presentations under our canine belts, we have been thrilled with
I love the outdoor living part of the conversation, and our clients do too. It's so important because two of the big keys to success in business are paying attention to the client, and you have to be able to adapt. The outdoor living piece lead to both. We always start by looking at what people are seeking. What do they really want? Almost always that boils down to some kind of at-home, outdoor experience or set of experiences. That can mean a lot of different things to different people, so you have to
Stegmeier (Arlington, TX) manufactures forms for poured-in-place concrete countertops. Designed to simplify the installation process,…
Forshaw (St. Louis, MO) has introduced Exterus, a line of modular, ready-to-finish features for outdoor…
Even these days, when new houses tend to be overly large and their lots tend to be quite small, it’s rare to encounter a situation in which there’s nothing in a backyard other than a basic patio. Indeed, there’s almost always something more to do in designing a backyard — and on many happy occasions, there’s actually a good deal to be done in integrating spaces beyond the patio into
It’s hard to pin down exactly when it happened, but at some point in the past dozen years the concept of the outdoor kitchen took off – so much so that these features have moved from “relatively unusual” to “must-have” status on very nearly every upscale residential project. That’s certainly been the case in my practice, and I hear the same thing from most other watershapers and landscape professionals I’ve talked with in recent times. I’ve already covered some books intended to help us design these spaces and select among the variety of available components and options (“Book Notes,” June 2007). This time, I’ll take a different tack by
Most people I know have a favorite vacation spot, a favorite leisure-time activity and a favorite form of self-indulgence. In creating backyard environments for these folks, we as watershapers and landscape designers often find ourselves able to roll elements of one, two or all three of those "favorite things" up in a single package in ways that closely reflect our clients' passions and personalities. At my company, we strive to make a direct connection with those preferences by letting our prospective clients know that we want to enable them to vacation in their own backyards and come home to outdoor environments that epitomize the good life. In some cases, that means
I love the fact that more and more people I talk to are referring to the bodies of water they create as works of art. At their best, watershapes do indeed possess all the aesthetic potential of
