Courtyard

Oh my gosh! There is a courtyard!!! It still excites me. This house was built and situated perfectly to use passive solar heating and cooling!

Features

As of right now, just the fact that there is one, and it will be a feature, is enough.

Changes

This will likely be the most used room in the house... It is south facing and gets nice and warm during the day.  We want to use the heat by placing a pondwall along the back wall.  Aside from passive solar heating, we thing that the reflection of the water will look great in the new hallway.

The new hallway will have the same 3 arches that you see in the existing photos (see bottom also).  I want to use that hall to partially heat the home with sunlight that will enter thru the new windows. The bridge idea is no longer on the plans as it covers too much of the water and we are not sure that is the correct entrance location for the courtyard.  The new entry will be from the center arch on the kitchen side of the house.

We will be removing the gutters along most of the courtyard. The rain creates a great pattern from the tile on the roof. The rain will drip into the pool and overflow will be transported to the drain field in front of the house by an exposed rill.

There is a doorway in the entrance hall opposite the main entrance that we are going to remove (since we will incorporate a much needed garage/house connection). In it's place we will put a wall fountain that drips into a small water pond.  The rill will pass just in front of the pond toward the front.

We have custom cedar boards from my uncle to build a solid door as the entrance to the courtyard for privacy.  The existing wrought iron will be attached to it.  This way the meows can join us outside since it will be the only outside that they get. 

Color

The walls will be a yellow stucco to contrast with the green in the entry, the orange in the hallway and the many plants that I want to have.

Furnishings

We will incorporate seat walls as part of the planing beds and pond as well as having chairs and a table.  We will put in hook eyes for a hammock also.

Lighting

We want to have a light string swag over the top of the area for summer evenings.  There will also be up lights for the evenings.

Plants

Banana (musa basjoo), Bears breeches (Acanthus Mollis), Toad lily (Trycertis), Angels Trumpet (Brugmansia), Rodgersia, and many others for the time being.