Our Home Remodel: Outdoor Addition

When we first bought our home, the outdoor area needed some love… eventually! Remodeling the interior of our home was the immediate priority but we knew we would want to do a patio add-on, so we started saving. We were in the house for almost 5 years before we started the project! When it comes to remodels, don’t be afraid to do projects in phases. Save your money, get one phase done, save again and tackle the next. If your budget doesn’t allow you do to everything at once, break it down into phases!

A run-in with a very large snake hiding in our pool rocks led to my husband telling me to immediately find a contractor and get our outdoor remodel project started! I don’t know about you, but when your husband gives you the go-ahead for a big project, you get it started as quickly as you can! Now don’t get me wrong, our pool was really pretty before we started the renovation, but our flagstone decking was popping up all over the place and the rock waterfall was a bed for snakes to hide and mosquitoes to breed—Texas, y’all! We wanted a cleaner look that was more maintenance-free than the current setup.

The original back patio was nice but it was small and didn’t give us much room to entertain, which we love to do. With the help of Ryan at Creekstone Outdoors, we came up with a solid plan to meet the wants and needs of our outdoor space. The space needed to not only be functional, but it needed to tie in seamlessly with the design of the home. It was important to us that the addition looked original to the home and wasn’t an obvious ‘add-on.’ The design needed to be cohesive and we made that happen by incorporating materials, textures and colors that were part of the main home—such as the white Austin stone, brick and wood accents.

One of the most frequently asked questions I get about our outdoor addition is what stone did we use on the pool deck? It’s actually stamped concrete that we did with no stain & just a matte sealer on top. Our contractor thought we were nuts for not doing a stain on it, but it turned out exactly how I had envisioned it.

We couldn’t be happier with how this space turned out. The space looks like it has been here since the house was built & not an after thought. We enjoy spending out Spring & Summer days out here entertaining family & friends.