Our client would always say the word, “Outdoor room”. At first this meant to me that this room would be outside- perhaps a deck or screen porch. However, in these people’s mind, the outdoor room was, well... indoor; a space that you could use all winter long and never be cold. I began to understand that this ‘outdoor’ room was more of a rustic space where you could open the windows in the summer and feel the air.

As we started working on this space we decided to put rustic boards on the walls and ceilings to make it look like an old barn. But it needed something else.

I remember when I was a child seeing an old barn that had cables tying the two sides together to try to help pull the sag out of the roof ridge. Rafter ties. Hey! How about some rafter ties in our ‘outdoor room’? What do these rafter ties do? Nothing, but they look good and make the ceiling more cozy, so how about a cup of hot chocolate in the ‘outdoor room’?