The Outdoor Room Co. · Deck & garden-room design–build · Harmon Creek & Bellwood Springs · Since 2013
Draw the room the garden keeps suggesting.
The Outdoor Room Co. designs decks as garden architecture — cedar and composite floors that meet the planting beds, cable rail that disappears at the sightline, and pergolas engineered to the county snow load so the wisteria has something honest to climb.
Design–build · Lic. #GC-55230 · (555) 665-2214 · studio@outdoorroomco.example
We do not build decks. We build the place the garden gets enjoyed from.
The studio method
Drawn from the garden outward
Most decks are drawn from the back door outward and stop where the budget does. Ours start at the property line and work back: where the old maple throws its shade at six, where the phlox wants full sun, where the table will sit when the dahlias are up. The drawing is a garden plan that happens to include a floor — and it is yours to keep whoever builds it.
What we do
Three rooms the garden keeps asking for
The garden floor
Composite in the capped families that shrug off the moss a shaded valley grows, or cedar where the sun will oil it silver — either way the boards meet the planting beds at a mowing edge, so the lawn never needs trimming by hand and the gardener never needs a ladder to the deck.
The canopy line
Pergolas engineered to the county’s 40-psf snow load with rafters counted for January and the vine you plan to grow — wisteria and grapes trained on wires that unclip for maintenance. A canopy is a loaded structure, not garden decoration, and it is drawn by the same hand that draws the footings.
The quiet rail
Cable rail in 316 stainless, tensioned once, with posts set low and back so the wire all but disappears at the sightline — and a guard that still stands 36 inches wherever the walking surface passes 30 above grade. The garden stays the view; the code stays met without announcing itself.
Spring 2026
The rate sheet, as printed in the studio
Per square foot and per running foot, installed — the same numbers that hang by the studio door. The drawing and the fixed number follow the garden visit, and neither moves after you sign.
Composite garden deckfrom $61/sq ft
hidden clips, picture-frame border
Cedar garden deckfrom $54/sq ft
5/4×6 western red, plugged screws
Pergola & canopy, 12×14from $7,100
engineered to 40-psf snow
Cable rail, installedfrom $144/ln ft
316 stainless, blocking included
Planter & bench carpentryfrom $96/ln ft
drawn into the frame, not bolted on
Low-voltage lightingfrom $1,150/run
wired before the boards
Harmon Creek · Bellwood Springs · 2024–2026
Rooms from the sketchbook
Six rooms from the last two seasons, photographed in the hour they were drawn for. The sketchbook at the studio holds all two hundred and sixty — ask and we will find the one nearest your garden.
How it goes
From sketchbook to first supper
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Visit 1
The garden read
A sun map of the yard at three hours, the soil checked where the footings want to go, and the mature roots noted pier by pier. You keep the feasibility sketch and the budget band, whoever builds the room.
Week 1
The drawing & the fixed number
A scaled plan with the table, the beds and the canopy on it — footings routed around roots on helical piers where an auger would injure them — and one price that carries the garden’s complications instead of discovering them.
Weeks 2–3
Piers, frame, floor
Helical piers torqued to the gauge between roots, or poured at depth where the yard is open; frame at twelve-inch centres; boards gapped to the valley’s humidity and bordered so no cut end faces a bed.
Handover
The first supper
Lighting aimed at the table and the planting step, the care sheet and the vine’s training schedule filed in the folder — and the canopy handed over with the wisteria already clipped in.
The numbers off the studio wall — bring the garden and we will read you the nearest page.
The pergola was drawn around a thirty-year-old wisteria we were told could not be moved — helical piers threaded between the roots, rafters counted to the snow load, and the plant trained onto the wire by the same hand that drew the plan. In June the whole structure disappears under flower, and the room below it has never been cooler.
Asked in the garden
Can you build around mature trees?
Yes — carefully and by the pier. Helical piers thread between roots with no excavation and no soil compaction from a concrete truck, the canopy gets a pergola gap rather than a prune, and the watering ring stays intact. The tree was here first; the drawing respects seniority.
Does cable rail actually meet code?
Installed properly, yes: a 36-inch guard wherever the walking surface sits more than 30 inches above grade, gaps a four-inch sphere cannot pass, and tensioned cable with the blocking the code asks for at every post. What it does not meet is the eye — which is the point.
Composite or cedar under the maples?
Heavy shade grows moss on anything porous. The capped composite families shed it with a wash; cedar in shade wants oil every second spring instead of every third, and in full sun it fades to the silver most gardens quietly prefer. We quote both with the maintenance named.
What can a pergola really carry?
Ours are engineered to the county’s 40-psf snow load with the vine’s live load added — a wisteria at maturity is not decoration, it is tonnage. Rafter count, post size and the attachment to the house are computed, never guessed from a catalogue’s shade assumption.
Bring us the garden.
One visit with a sun map and a soil probe, one drawing that starts at the property line, one fixed number. Harmon Creek, Bellwood Springs and the gardens between.