The joys of California design

I'm reporting this week from a redwood-shaded deck on a Northern California hillside where I've been using my vacation time to trawl around looking for backyard design inspiration.

What I've discovered is that more and more people are cutting loose with the ideas whizzing around in their imaginations and their results are so compelling I've been rendered speechless, which almost never happens to me.

Of course freely exploring one's vision can raise the risk of disaster. For example, California has a lot of the Old Hippie School of Design, where the ideas are stuff like, "Dude, let's tile the roof with broken dishes." I'm not even kidding.

What the Deck!

But sometimes a homeowner's unbridled creativity leads to breathtaking accomplishments. For example, my friends Jim and Millie wanted a deck that would require very little maintenance. So instead of lumber decking, they chose variegated slate tiles with a beautiful dappled texture.

Jim and Millie constructed the deck to flow around the existing redwood trees, which makes the deck feel like it's floating in mid-air. They left enough space around each trunk to allow for the tree's swaying in high winds. However, the space surrounding each trunk presented a safety hazard to aging in-laws, so they built planter boxes to act as a barrier. The planters fit like a ring around the tree trunk, and move with the tree.

Jim and Millie puzzled over the railing design, because they didn't want to obstruct their view of the surrounding hills and trees. They came up with a design and then welded their own railings using a small wire-feed welder. The entire cost for the steel was $US700. Jim figures it would have cost four times as much to buy materials for a wooden railing. And if they'd hired a metal fabricator to build the railings for them, it would have cost thousands of dollars. Welding rocks.

Wooden decks can get scorching hot but Jim and Millie's stone stays deliciously cool in hot weather. And it's almost zero maintenance. Wood tends to be a yearly maintenance issue, but a stone deck requires no regular staining or resealing the way wood does. Plus you can host barefoot square dances and no one ever goes home with a sliver.

Building an elevated stone deck is easy enough in California where the ground never freezes. Pressure treated plywood is installed over the joists, then an epoxy membrane is applied, followed by tile adhesive and stone tiles.

But in most of Canada there would be far too much movement in the wooden deck framing during freeze and thaw cycles, and the stone tiles would crack as the framing heaves. Therefore, in harsher climates a homeowner would have to use reinforced framing to support the weight of a mortar bed (a robust layer of concrete that forms a rigid base for the stone) prior to installing the stone tile. It's more work, but the effect is so striking, it's worth considering.

Tip: Cutting slate to fit means renting a tile saw. The water-cooled circular diamond wheel quickly shapes stone and tile. It's fun to use but it's loud, so wear ear gear.

Falls Pride

On the other side of the hill, I dropped in on Larry and Bonnie, who've just finished designing and installing a gorgeous waterfall in a small courtyard off their master bathroom.

They used the same stone in the bathroom floor as they did on the patio, so the bathroom seems to flow outside into a secret romantic grotto.

The waterfall is a pile of rocks stacked in a random, pleasing tumble. A simple concrete trough runs behind the waterfall near the top. Larry and Bonnie chipped openings along the trough's front edge wherever they wanted a stream of water to flow down the face of the rocks. A small pump in the bottom of the pond pumps the water back up to the trough again.

Off to the Races

Both of these couples had to trust that their own ideas had merit or they would simply have hired someone else to do the designing and building. By doing it themselves they not only saved wads of cash, but they have the permanent flush of achievement, and that beats the pink cheeks of high blood pressure any day.

If you visit Northern California, check out the Mendocino Art Centre, (three hours north of San Francisco) where you can take weekend courses in everything from Welding for Women to Outdoor Sculpture in Cast Concrete.