This area of the house was a bit of a mess in terms of layout. The original owners evidently hadn’t planned much for it, or at least not planned well. In addition to the weak barbecue setup I replaced, they had a propane fire pit, but it was way out in the lawn, meaning weird access and a sense of isolation.
I knew when I started I wanted to have a cohesive area that all connected and flowed in a sensible way. It took me a while to figure out the best way to lay things out, but eventually I settled on pushing the hot tub farther out into the lawn (the area you see it in above was originally lawn–I stuck it there with no plans for the future) and separating the cold plunge from it (as you saw, attached to the side cabinet in the kitchen area).
This would create a larger open space and open up the view out from the kitchen area, keep the view for the hot tub, and make walking through easy. It also meant space to relocate the fire pit so it was actually part of the space instead of some weird lonely thing out in the dark no one wanted to use.
Step one was tearing out lawn and digging down enough to lay a base of compacted gravel where the hot tub would go–I needed to get that moved before doing anything else. That’s the one of two things I didn’t do myself–move the hot tub. I paid some movers $150 for that. (the other was the final propane line connection, done by a plumber to be legal and not explode).
Next I had to extend the wiring for the hot tub and wanted to conceal it, which meant getting that all run in conduit before back filling the rest of the area with gravel. It got a bit fancy coming off the deck and through the rocks to get into the dirt.
Because I didn’t want to wait until the plumber was available to do the propane line, I trenched for it and ran 4″ ABS that would run from the new fire pit location to the lawn so I could continue working on the hardscaping in the meantime and the plumber could just fish the PE pipe through.
To break up what would otherwise be a big space of lifeless hardscape, I wanted a couple spots of green. In the corner by the house, I build up a rock formation with an irrigated planting bed and transplanted some idaho fescue and blue bunch wheat grass.
On the side of the hot tub, I built another. And yes all of those rocks came from my property, and yes it was a lot of hard work collecting them off hillsides.
Fire Pit
I found a fire ring kit with the concrete block the size I wanted and got the base level and built it up so the flagstone would surround the base. I also bought a new fixture since the old one was 20 years old and low-output. If I was going to go through all this trouble, I wanted more fire and push button ignition.
Flagstone
I went with slate flag stone for the patio area since I’d never match the existing pavers and I prefer the look anyway–slate is also surprisingly inexpensive. It was a tricky affair since the area wasn’t level and couldn’t be–the borders were all at different grades, so it was less about making it level than flat with all borders matching the level of whatever they met (e.g. grass, pavers).
Removing Old Fire Pit
Now I could tear out the old fire pit and paver area and fill it in with more lawn. This was not too bad but it took a lot of trips in the quad with the trailer to cart all the pavers up to my storage spot at the top of the driveway.
I back filled the paver area with the dirt I had dug out for the hot tub flagstone area. I definitely needed another 2 yards or so, and I knew it, but I was so exhausted and sick of this job, and the idea of shoveling another 2 yards of anything made me want to burn the whole place down, so I just used what I had, and it settled a bit lower than the surrounding grade. Not enough to worry about but it’s a bit annoying.
The Fence
The final step was getting ride of the hideous brown chain-link fence. I wasn’t about to have done all this work and then be looking at (and through) that. This spot has an amazing view out over the valley, and I wanted it as unobstructed as possible.
Since we don’t have small kids, I wasn’t worried too much about safety–I even considered just removing it and leaving it wide open. But the younger of our dogs is a bit too curious so I decided a barrier was a good idea.
My solution was to do a stainless steel cable setup. I chopped the existing posts down to about 2 feet, which was tricky–the ground is uneven and unlevel, and it’s a long run… and I wanted the cables to not be zig-zagging up and down like I built the fence drunk, so it took some doing with a lot of measuring and string lines. Every post is a different height, but it looks like they’re all even… I was worried it wouldn’t turn out that well.
I got 4×4 post sleeves of a Trex-type material so I’d never have to paint them and they’d never rot. I then made shims of pressure treated wood to fill the gaps at the top and bottom of each post that would make it fit tightly and keep it centered. I then tacked a 1″ thick slice of 4×4 post into the top as a place to affix a top cap.
Next I had to drill holes and run the steel cable. In a solid post, this is easy. In a post that has 4 walls separated by air space… the threading is a bit trickier, so you’d better have those holes lined up perfectly. My solution to that was to build a jig that would fit over the post and let me drill from each side (each side through post sleeve and steel post) with perfect alignment.
My original plan had been to do a Trex top rail as would be conventional. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea. The first problem would be that I would need to have another board underneath to keep the rails rigid and flat, and there wasn’t anything suitable in the fake wood realm. More importantly, that top rail would ruin the unobscured view I wanted.
So because this fence wasn’t meant to actually prevent a human from falling through, I decided to place the top cable higher and forego the top rail entirely, and instead cap each post with a piece of flagstone from my remaining pile. I just used construction adhesive to connect them to the 4×4 section inside the top of the sleeve.
And that’s a wrap. We added a table in the kitchen area for main seating, and the area is so much more functional and inviting now. I use it year-round.