Put Your Shades On

Concrete Patio With Open Air Patio Cover In Cumming, GA

There was no tree on this lot and nothing else throwing shade, so the family spent most of the year indoors looking at a backyard they'd paid for and never used.

Before

A Backyard They Looked At and Never Used

Owning a yard you can’t sit in is its own kind of frustrating. You paid for the land, you see it through the doors every morning, and by eleven o’clock it’s too hot out there to stand in.

That was their summer. The builder had left a small slab and somewhere to put the grill, and nothing on the property or either side of it cast enough shadow to sit under. So the doors stayed shut, the yard stayed empty, and everyone stayed inside where the air conditioning was.

After

The Fireplace Does Three Jobs

Warmth on a cool evening is the one everybody expects. The other two are why it sits at that end of the cover.

Houses on this street are close together, and a roof open on all four sides leaves you on show to both sides. Sitting out while the neighbors watch you do it takes the ease out of an evening, so we built the fireplace into the end wall and closed off the side that needed closing. Once there’s a stone wall standing there anyway, the television has somewhere sensible to hang.

A tree would have fixed this in twenty years. The roof did it in a season.

The Two Areas

Under the Cover

Three hundred and forty-five square feet of it, cedar rafters left open overhead with tongue and groove between them. The fire’s at one end and everything faces it. This is where the family actually spends an August evening now.

The Open Patio

Nine hundred square feet of stamped concrete all told, so most of it lies out beyond the roof. The table went there, and the sun is welcome on the days anyone wants it.

The Details

The Footings

They went in with the slab, which means the patio is the foundation. The whole roof runs down into concrete poured to carry it, and you’ll never see a bit of it.

The Truss

An exposed timber truss spans the gable end and holds the ridge. It also gives the cover a face worth looking at from across the lawn.

The Mantel

A single timber beam crosses the stone with the television above it. Without that break the wall would read as one flat expanse of rock.

The Build in Full

Component	Product
Patio cover	Gable roof, open air, 345 sq. ft.
Ceiling	Exposed cedar rafters with tongue and groove
Fireplace	Gas non-vented, stone
Patio	Stamped concrete, 900 sq. ft.
Foundation	Monolithic footings, poured with the slab

About $98,000 to build in the north metro today. A fair share of that went into the ground before anything stood up, which is the part nobody sees and the part everything else depends on.

Your Slab Is Probably the Wrong Size

Builders pour the minimum and move on. Most patios have to grow before anything worth having can go on top of them, which is where a project like this one actually starts. Tell us what’s back there now and we’ll work out what it would take.

or visit us at Woodstock Design Center 135 Village Center W, Suite 100