Family-Friendly Backyard Offers Enjoyment for All Ages
A stylish new entertaining patio and children’s play area transform a backyard in Austin, Texas
There’s something for everyone in this stylish, family-friendly backyard in Austin, Texas. Sliding glass doors open from the home’s living room onto a new outdoor entertaining patio, which includes a generously sized outdoor kitchen and dining area. Cushioned wraparound bench seats beckon from across the lawn, where parents can kick back and relax while they keep an eye on children enjoying the slide and climbing wall built into the slope in the yard’s opposite corner.
Outdoor Kitchen and Dining Area
A crisp outdoor palette of off-white and dark charcoal echoes the colors of the pale limestone veneer covering the home’s exterior and dark roof overhead. The sloped roof structure over the patio existed before the renovation and once covered a smaller outdoor patio. B. Jane enlarged the patio to roughly 450 square feet.
Mimicking the lines of the roof and the proportion of the large sliding glass doors, B. Jane poured the concrete pads of the new patio in crisp, rectilinear shapes. Channels of dark river rock between the concrete pads offer an elegant solution for drainage.
B. Jane says the use of poured concrete, rather than cut stone, was a cost-saving choice that freed up more of the budget for the outdoor kitchen and wet-rated ceiling fans overhead. The combination of the cooling fans with a pair of wall-mounted outdoor heaters allows the family to use the outdoor space in comfort year-round.
Outdoor ceiling fans: Big Ass Fans
A crisp outdoor palette of off-white and dark charcoal echoes the colors of the pale limestone veneer covering the home’s exterior and dark roof overhead. The sloped roof structure over the patio existed before the renovation and once covered a smaller outdoor patio. B. Jane enlarged the patio to roughly 450 square feet.
Mimicking the lines of the roof and the proportion of the large sliding glass doors, B. Jane poured the concrete pads of the new patio in crisp, rectilinear shapes. Channels of dark river rock between the concrete pads offer an elegant solution for drainage.
B. Jane says the use of poured concrete, rather than cut stone, was a cost-saving choice that freed up more of the budget for the outdoor kitchen and wet-rated ceiling fans overhead. The combination of the cooling fans with a pair of wall-mounted outdoor heaters allows the family to use the outdoor space in comfort year-round.
Outdoor ceiling fans: Big Ass Fans
A 12-foot-long outdoor kitchen runs the width of the patio, anchored by a 6-foot-tall wall covered in limestone veneer. A gas-powered grill sits in the center of the dark granite countertop, with an outdoor fridge, storage drawers and a warming oven integrated below.
The close proximity of the outdoor kitchen to the home’s back door and the outdoor dining table shortens the number of steps needed to bring anything outside from indoors and to serve hot-off-the-grill dishes to the kitchen table inside.
Shop for outdoor grills on Houzz
The close proximity of the outdoor kitchen to the home’s back door and the outdoor dining table shortens the number of steps needed to bring anything outside from indoors and to serve hot-off-the-grill dishes to the kitchen table inside.
Shop for outdoor grills on Houzz
Built-In Bench Seating
Though not immediately apparent in photos, the backyard slopes upward, away from the home. B. Jane addressed the slope with two design solutions. First, she attached a built-in bench to a 3-foot-tall retaining wall that runs along the back of the property. “We needed to retain the slope in order to expand the patio, so the bench provides a retaining wall as well as seating,” B. Jane says.
Her team constructed the L-shaped bench (10 by 20 feet) out of Lueders limestone and filled the planting bed behind it with a mix of evergreen and semitropical foliage plants, including podocarpus, shell ginger (Alpinia zerumbet), loquat, yew (Taxus sp.) and variegated flax lily (Dianella tasmanica ‘Variegata’).
Four movable Adirondack-style chairs offer seating flexibility. Here, they’re drawn up around an outdoor fire pit.
Though not immediately apparent in photos, the backyard slopes upward, away from the home. B. Jane addressed the slope with two design solutions. First, she attached a built-in bench to a 3-foot-tall retaining wall that runs along the back of the property. “We needed to retain the slope in order to expand the patio, so the bench provides a retaining wall as well as seating,” B. Jane says.
Her team constructed the L-shaped bench (10 by 20 feet) out of Lueders limestone and filled the planting bed behind it with a mix of evergreen and semitropical foliage plants, including podocarpus, shell ginger (Alpinia zerumbet), loquat, yew (Taxus sp.) and variegated flax lily (Dianella tasmanica ‘Variegata’).
Four movable Adirondack-style chairs offer seating flexibility. Here, they’re drawn up around an outdoor fire pit.
Children’s Play Area
B. Jane also used the yard’s slope to her advantage in the children’s play area. Here, retaining walls made of limestone and Cor-Ten steel hold back the soil, while a new slide and custom-made climbing wall capitalize on the grade change. The upper section of the children’s play area consists of an open sandbox filled with fine rounded gravel.
Get the Kids Outside With Family-Friendly Backyard Ideas
B. Jane also used the yard’s slope to her advantage in the children’s play area. Here, retaining walls made of limestone and Cor-Ten steel hold back the soil, while a new slide and custom-made climbing wall capitalize on the grade change. The upper section of the children’s play area consists of an open sandbox filled with fine rounded gravel.
Get the Kids Outside With Family-Friendly Backyard Ideas
B. Jane says she finds gravel to be less messy than sand, and less likely to track into the house or attract neighborhood cats. A fence-mounted chalkboard provides a place for drawing.
The play area’s flexible design means it can transition into new spaces, such as a play house or second patio space, as the clients’ daughter grows up.
For now, the homeowners say they enjoy their new backyard daily, whether they’re firing up the grill for dinner, hosting friends or watching their daughter and her friends come up with imaginative play. It’s a space that perfectly complements their home and lifestyle and a place where everyone feels welcome.
The play area’s flexible design means it can transition into new spaces, such as a play house or second patio space, as the clients’ daughter grows up.
For now, the homeowners say they enjoy their new backyard daily, whether they’re firing up the grill for dinner, hosting friends or watching their daughter and her friends come up with imaginative play. It’s a space that perfectly complements their home and lifestyle and a place where everyone feels welcome.
Patio at a Glance
Who lives here: A professional couple with a young daughter
Location: Austin, Texas
Size: 10,000-square-foot (929-square-meter) lot; 450-square-foot (42-square-meter) entertaining patio
Designer: B. Jane Gardens
The owners of this space hired landscape designer B. Jane to reimagine the original backyard, which consisted of a lawn expanse and little else, as a space that would foster indoor-outdoor living and better connect to their contemporary-style home. Their wish list included an expanded outdoor living space with a kitchen and dining area, as well as a play area for their young daughter and her friends.
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