Luxury Outdoor Living

One plan for the fireplace, the kitchen and the seating

Many outdoor spaces get built one piece at a time: a patio one year, a grill station the next, a pergola after that. Each part may be fine, but the whole never feels like a room. An outdoor living space planned as one project puts the fireplace where it draws the eye and shelters the seating, puts the cooking area near the kitchen door and out of the way of the conversation, and covers the part of the space that has to work in the rain.

This page is about that combined project. Single decks, patios and outdoor kitchens each have their own pages. Here we are pulling them into one finished outdoor room that looks like it belongs to the house, which means matching the house's trim, roofline and materials instead of buying a kit and setting it in the yard.

Steve starts at the house, looking at the rooflines, the door locations, the views and where the sun sits in the late afternoon. Where the house is inside a local historic district, exterior changes go to the historic district commission, and we build that review time into the schedule.

Tying a new roof into the house

A covered structure attached to the house is a roof framing project. Its rafters either hang from a ledger fastened to the house frame or bear on a beam carried by posts, and how the new roof meets the existing one decides how it sheds water. That connection is where most attached porches and pavilions eventually leak, so it gets careful attention. The ledger is bolted through the sheathing into the house framing with flashing behind and over it, never fastened to siding alone.

The roof has to carry New England snow, and snow drifts pile extra load where a lower roof meets a taller wall. Framing is sized to the design loads for your town, and drawings go through the building department. Where a roofline gets complicated, or a long span wants to be open with no posts in the view, an engineer sizes the beams.

Inside the covered area, ceilings are usually finished in tongue-and-groove or beadboard to match the house, with a ceiling fan box and light locations framed in before the boards go up.

Framing is sized to the design loads for your town, and drawings go through the building department.

Footings, frost and materials for coastal weather

Posts that carry a roof need footings below frost depth, commonly about four feet in Massachusetts. Frost heave lifts shallow footings every winter, and a roof tied to a house cannot rise and fall on its own without damaging the connection. A masonry fireplace sits on its own foundation, sized for its weight and also below frost.

Materials have to handle freeze-thaw cycles and, on the South Coast and the Cape, salt air. That means stainless or properly coated fasteners and connectors, rot-resistant or composite trim where water collects, flashing that will not corrode against treated lumber, and stone, brick or pavers rated for freeze-thaw. Standard hardware near the water can rust through in a few seasons, so exposure drives the material list from the start.

Drainage is part of the design. A new roof sends a lot of water to its edges, so gutters, leaders and where that water goes on the ground are planned with the patio or deck surface, not left for later.

Power, light, gas and heat

An outdoor room gets used after dark, so lighting goes in with the framing: fixtures rated for wet or damp locations, step lights, a ceiling fan, outlets where they will actually be used and switches by the door. A licensed electrician does the wiring with outdoor-rated, ground-fault protected circuits.

A gas fireplace, a gas grill or overhead heaters need a gas line run by a licensed gas fitter. A wood-burning fireplace needs a chimney that meets height and clearance requirements relative to the roof and anything nearby. Outdoor kitchen appliances need power, sometimes water and a drain, and any outdoor sink has to be drained for winter or protected from freezing. We plan these runs before the patio or deck surface goes down, so nothing has to be cut in afterward.

Heat changes how long the season lasts. Infrared heaters mounted in the ceiling warm people rather than air, which is the only kind of heat that works in an open-sided room, and they need their own circuits or gas supply planned in the framing. Screens or removable panels between the columns add more weeks on each end of the season. If you want to close the room in fully later, we can frame the openings so that change does not mean rebuilding the structure, and we tell you what code requirements a fully enclosed room would bring.

Weather, permits and the written scope

You get a written scope that breaks the project into the roof structure, the foundations, the fireplace, the kitchen, the surfaces and the electrical, so you can see what each part covers. Permits and inspections go through your town, with footing, framing, electrical and final inspections, and gas inspections where gas is involved.

Outdoor work depends on weather, and when it is going to affect the schedule we tell you rather than letting you find out. We protect lawns, plantings and the house exterior, keep the site organized and leave it clean each day. When something changes, such as ledge where a footing was planned or rot found behind the siding at the ledger, Steve tells you directly, and the change is written and priced before it is built.

The order of work matters on a project like this, and we explain it at the start. Footings and the fireplace foundation go in first, then the roof structure, then rough electrical, gas and plumbing, then the surfaces, the ceiling and the trim. Masonry and stone work need temperatures above freezing to cure properly, so an outdoor fireplace started late in the fall may wait for spring. Knowing that in advance lets you decide when to start and what you want ready for the first summer.

See the rest of our luxury work, or browse the gallery for rooms we have finished.