The Garden Room
Whether you call it a Garden Room or Indoor/Outdoor living, opening your home to your garden is probably the single most expansive change you can make in the feeling of your house. |
 Let’s look at the remodeled home, above. The rendering to the left is the room prior to the renovation. It’s a typical room in almost any house — especially homes built in the early part of the 20th century. The window faces the front yard. The room is awkwardly narrow with a fireplace at the end of the room not visible in the rendering. Because the window faces the front yard and street, the homeowners usually kept it curtained to protect privacy. |
 To the right is a rendering with the structural changes but before the garden room was created. A screened porch off the front door, not originally visible from the living room, was turned into a sunroom. The front door was moved to the adjacent wall — creating a nice focal point as well as providing the opportunity to create a separate entrance garden (see last image). French doors open the living room to the new sunroom. Another pair of French doors open to the front yard. |
 The final rendering shows the effect of an enclosed patio off the new French doors. Now not only does the out-of-doors feel like a part of the house but you’re welcomed outside to the new patio. |
 The patio is a Garden Room. Just like any other room, a Garden Room has walls and a ceiling. In this garden room, two walls are formed from the house itself. And just like rooms in your house, you can enter the garden room from the adjacent enclosed rooms — from the living room and from the sunroom. The other two walls of the garden room are created by an 8′ tall pergola. The canopy of a tree — along with the pergola — create the ceiling to the new garden room. We benefited from existing mature plantings — shrubs and trees that aid in the sense of enclosure and increased privacy. Note: The cobble patio was raised above the roots to to avoid stressing the tree. We also worked around the water meter which became part of the fabric of the patio. |
  Strategic views of the street are blocked by stained glass panels in the pergola. Now there’s no need for curtains to provide privacy — the Garden Room visually and physically expands the home and provides a buffer from the street — and making use of an often wasted front yard. |
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| All images courtesy of Braitman Design/Build |
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