Patio Life – Building an outdoor fireplace into the side of our garage (Part 1)
Outdoor patio paradise! Isn’t it magical?!?! There was a lot going on with this project, so I will tell the story and share the photos in a series of posts. The project began mid-summer and the fireplace and exterior garage renovation were completed the day of our first snow in early December. I sat in front of the fire on this snowy eve with a gloved hand, glass of wine, and umbrella to prevent snow from accumulating on my glasses and in my wine. Part 2 of this series reviews the construction phase.
Project Inspiration
We are patio people. I grew up with backyard parties and BBQ’s as a kid. How lucky am I? After Patrick and I married, we purchased our second home in Oak Park, IL. Our first home was a loft in a 1920’s factory in downtown Chicago, but this was our first home with what we craved….open, outdoor space. We enjoyed many patio parties together with friends and family.
Our Oak Park home was a beautiful 1920’s house in the town that was home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. This residence was a gut renovation project (plumbing, electrical, re-use of space, etc.) and it is where our son was born. We have special memories from our time living there, including our first outdoor fireplace.
The fireplace was designed to fit the space and we learned a lot in the process to prepare us for our next fireplace project. We are super lucky that fireplace installation is my brother’s area of expertise.
The freestanding fireplace was amazing. Running a gas line made it super easy to get a fire started and electrical wiring from the house was run to allow for additional patio lighting. What a great way to extend patio season into late fall and early spring in the Midwest!
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Outdoor Fireplace – Before
Our current home is also located in the Midwest. It is a Victorian Italianate home with a wonderful patio. We are always relaxing and entertaining on our patio. It’s just who we are. We decided that we had to build another outdoor fireplace to extend our patio season.
The garage borders one side of our patio and a window was on that side of the garage. You can see this in the before picture below. The benefit was additional lighting from the interior garage lighting; however, who wants to see parked cars in the garage? Window treatments were an option, but I’m not a fan of garage window treatments and we have so many spiders that cobweb control could have turned into a full-time job.
We had a nice evergreen shrub under the window, but in preparation for construction my brother ripped it out and made it look like a sad, desperate twig.
The garage had aluminum siding. We live in an historic district and our home has wood siding. We were not required to replace aluminum with wood siding, but we thought it was a good opportunity to tie the more recently constructed garage with our historic home.
The front view of the garage was really nothing special or unique. In order to simplify the project, we had to skip the gas starter. Definitely not a project killer.
We spent some time walking through the neighborhood to get ideas. In the end, we decided on local stone to match the foundation of our home and we pulled the stone around to the driveway/street side of the garage.
Outdoor Fireplace – Getting the project started
As the project progressed , there was definitely scope creep. There were additional opportunities to tie the design of garage back to the house. We added dental molding under the soffit and a window over the garage door. The medallion over the window matches the medallions over the windows on our home.
Check out Part 2 of this series which highlights progress during the construction phase. The final post will highlight the completed patio project. We need to relocate the barbecues for more space, add plants, and finish it off with some decor details.
