You've been picturing this for a while

When we first met, Francis told me what the house meant to them — a fresh start, a place to make new memories, somewhere the whole family could come together. She'd love a proper outdoor entertaining area, but the front yard was all they had to work with. It stepped down from the house, the layout was awkward, and her mother-in-law was living with them and needed increasing mobility support. Francis had looked at it and figured the best they could hope for was a concreted area, maybe a barbecue later, and some ramps to make it accessible. She didn't think the space could be anything more than that.

As we talked it through together, we realised that we didn't have to work with the limitations — we could solve them. Instead of a disconnected concrete pad with ramps added on, we could bring the entire space onto one level. Deck and concrete integrated together, stretching six or seven metres deep to the front boundary and ten or twelve metres across the front of the house. Wheelchair-accessible ramps built into both sides so her mother-in-law could come and go from either driveway — not as an accessibility add-on, but as part of the design. A floating wraparound seat to give it a courtyard feel, and screening to separate the space from the open driveway so it felt like a room, not a front path.

When she contacted us, she wasn't thinking big. She wanted a simple open pergola with some tinted laser light roofing — something to cast a bit of shade so the lounge room wouldn't get so hot, and somewhere her grandkids could sit and do their drawings on those hot afternoons when they visited. She thought that was all her budget could get.

When we sat down and talked through what she actually wanted from the space — not just the shade, but how she saw herself living with it — I could see a way to take it further. For the same budget, instead of an open structure, we could build an enclosed pergola with lighting and a plastered ceiling. We could also raise the structure higher to keep natural light in the lounge room whilst not blocking out the view. It extended her living room out into the space she'd been avoiding.