Terrace Project

I'm lucky enough, since I moved in (in December 2007), to have a nice terrace, and even a small garden.
But everything here has to be done, nothing has been set up yet.

So, this will be a new topic on ShamWerks : setting up my terrace, this is the "Terrasse Project". (you understood that "terrasse" is the French wording...)
I hope this will give some of you ideas and/or some help.

Inventory :

So, in the beginning, I have a 30m² terrace (4.7m wide per 6.3m long), covered with unskillfully installed concrete tiles (over a sand bed), with a separation from my neighbors' garden made of plastic-reeds-and-wire-mesh-that-fly-away-as-soon-as-there's-some-wind (lovely stuff)...

We get to the terrace via a 5m² loggia, i.e. not enough to make anything of it, specially with its ugly orange shaded tiling...

To plan things, I use Sketchup (as usual - I'm getting good at that soft!), transferring all the measurements, to get an accurate virtual representation of my terrace : To sum it up : nice place, lots of potential, but nothing sexy either.

The Project :

After putting my brain upside-down for quite a while, trying to put up a project that would be coherent, comfy and trendy, but not cold-designed, easy to maintain, and that would blend nicely with the 30's house facade... I ended up with that :

Compare the pictures with the ones on row above for the "before/after" effect.

This involves several sub-projects, that I will write about in detail in as many dedicated articles :

• A wooden fence (to replace the plastic reeds/wire mesh thingy) [edit 20091110 : article is online!]
• A Japanese garden, "tea garden" type (tsuboniwa chaniwa) [edit 20091117 : article is online!]
• A Japanese garden, "dry garden" type (tsuboniwa karesensui). [edit 20101104 : article is online!]
• Two bamboo planters behind the sofa. [edit 20091130 : article is online!]
• A wooden deck in the loggia. [edit 20100509 : article is online!]
• A wooden deck under the sofa, 3m x 3m. [edit 20100624 : article is online!]
• A boardwalk, used as a step to connect the 2 decks. [edit 20100630 : article is online!]

So... Some work to be done, uh?... To be continued!