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Manhattan Beach, Calif. is a small beach community that reclines on the sandy shores of the Pacific Ocean, an oasis located about half an hour southwest of Los Angeles. With 263 sunshine days and only 35 days of measurable rain each year, it’s an ideal location for outdoor living. For most people.
Only blocks from the ocean and its gentle sea breezes, one couple found themselves spending most of their time indoors, purposely avoiding their backyard. They described it as a soggy, soddy mess where not much would grow.
Sandy Koepke, a Beverly Hills-based interior designer, was called on to cure their backyard malaise and create a space that was a natural extension of the indoor living area and usable year round.
“What once was a small, damp, lonesome yard, is now an extension of the house. It is a huge transformation. The outdoor fireplace is burning almost every night, Koepke pointed out. “With the doors the way they are, it is like the fireplace is part of the living room, especially as the homeowner watches it burn while he is inside the house.”
“Since Manhattan Beach is a beach community, lots are very narrow and homes are very close together,” Koepke said. “The home owner’s site sits in an area that closely resembles a hole. It was an extreme exercise in controlling scale and proportion.”
She explained that the homeowners gave her clues that it had to feel like one of their favorite places: Cabo in Mexico. It had to be comfortable. It had to have typically indoor amenities brought outdoors. It had to be rustic, full of character, lived in, even though the space was going to be brand new. They wanted individual spaces for a Jacuzzi, outdoor fireplace, dining area, an outdoor living room and an outdoor kitchen. And all of it had to fit in a 986 square foot space.
The grass was the first casualty. The entire area of turf was replaced with concrete that was poured to sit at the same level as the floor of the home, making the transition from in to out seamless. Since the entire backyard was being covered, it had to be finished in a way that made it look inviting.
In a nod to the indoor tradition of putting a window above a sink, Koepke added an antique Indian grate into the wall above the outdoor kitchen’s sink to give illusion of a window and serve to break up the wall. “Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet was chosen for the grill, cabinetry and refrigeration pieces. They made life easy on us,” Koepke commented.” Because all of its products come with individually adjustable leveling legs, we were able to easily able to keep the countertop level and accommodate the slope we had to include for drainage.” Koepke explained that outdoor kitchens aren’t unlike their indoor cousins, but she does stress that there are little things to think about that make a big difference in how it weathers the elements. Use as few seams as possible in the countertop, she says. “Grout lines tend to break down over time and have the potential to leak,” said Koepke. She suggests using stainless steel appliances.
Another challenge was the view. Because all the homes were so bunched together there were no breath-taking views to work from. Koepke said she had to be inventive with the lot lines and incorporate their features to make appealing views that would fool the eye.
“The homeowner had a wall at the back side of the property,” Koepke said. “It helped hold back the slope from the neighbor’s property above. At the top of the wall was a Jacuzzi spa. Soaking in it from such a perch gave the homeowners a beautiful view of the city’s lights. However, they agreed with Koepke that the space would be better served as a dining area that could take in the city and outdoor living space views. Koepke had the bamboo forest at the back of the yard thinned and tidied to make it more appealing.
Koepke pulled the spa from the wall and replaced it with a canopied dining area that was shielded from the neighbors by metal screening and more bamboo. “The dining area became pretty, like a lantern lighting up the kitchen and the living area below it,” she said.
The Heart Of Any Home Is The Kitchen
The same is true for this outdoor living space. “When I first met with the homeowners, the husband wanted a full outdoor kitchen with a beer tap, wine chiller, sink, almost everything,” Koepke said. “His wife agreed to it, but she didn’t want to see a big long line of stainless steel as the first thing you see when you walk into the space.”
They compromised with an L-shaped structure that had the ability to camouflage the appliances. Koepke said she oriented the kitchen so that the majority of appliances ran along one of the long walls and short end of the ‘L’ was the only thing you saw as you looked at the space from the interior of the house.
Russ Faulk, vice president of product development for Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet says when choosing materials for use outdoors, have samples cut and leave them in the sun for a long period of time. Check to see how hot they get. This is especially important when it comes to choosing countertop materials. If a countertop gets too hot, it renders the kitchen virtually unusable.
The biggest lesson that came out of this project, she says, is keeping scale and proportion in mind. Koepke says most people stumble when it comes this. In a small space, there is no forgiveness for mistakes. For example, the fireplace had to fit within the area, but also be tall enough to ensure smoke made it out of the “hole,” otherwise it would forever be swirling around the homeowners and their guests.
The project was partly about the use of space and partly about the sight lines and view from indoors. “To take advantage of the area we had, we needed to seamlessly integrate the outdoor space with the home, said Koepke. “One had to be an extension of the other.” |
