This project was one of the more fun ones we’ve built in the last few years. Our Appleton client had seen our stone mosaic patio and wanted to include an element like that in the mixed material patio that would adorn their 100 year-old bungalo-styled downtown home. After creating a couple concept sketches and a color rendering, we were ready to build.
When we select materials for any project, we’re always considering the surroundings, how the materials are going to be used and the aesthetic of the space. We want our projects to be extremely functional but also beautiful, while being true to their surroundings. In this case, that meant the gorgeous textures and authenticity of a sand-molded paver.
Abstractions, representations of states of mind were also a recurrent theme in this meandering, multi-material hardscape. In the above picture you can see the transition from driveway (that the client must walk to and from each day to reach their carriage house-turned-garage in order to get to and from work) to clay paver/irregular bluestone walkway that leads to their unobtrusive rear entry, changing from regimented structure to the free flow of lines, overlapping like a stream or river. Our hope is for the transition to serve as a visual break to remind those who pass to relax and let go of the workaday world.
In the foreground you can see the meandering bluestone “river” pathway meeting the client’s garden; just beyond you see the mix of several textures and sizes of pavers, flagstone and even pebbles. This portion of the hardscape is where the clients intend to spend contemplative time, just sipping coffee, seeing the movement in the variations of form in the brick and stone underfoot, and letting their minds wander…
And in the distance you can see the formal gathering space, future home to a dining table made from 100-year-old reclaimed barn wood, sitting atop a simple, clean, refined sand-molded clay paver patio.
The walkway carrying our client from one patio to the next is a mix of old limestone slabs discovered on site and pavers, with painstaking attention to detail in alignment, to provide a narrow walkway (that will have lush vegetation spilling onto it in the future) that is remarkably easy to navigate.
And at the furthest end of the paver patio you can see large format, color-selected bluestone, chosen for the more earthen tones you don’t often find in bluestone, leading to the small, pre-roughed slab we poured to serve as home for their at-home retreat, a multi-jet hot tub.