Outdoor living with indoor comfort - trellis-covered enclosed patio

Sunset, June, 1995 by Peter O. Whiteley

A fence that's a wall graciously encloses this patio

The bones were great: a brick patio with a split-level trellis overhead and an inviting fireplace and barbecue at one end. By making one addition - a visionary fence flanking the fireplace - landscape designer Josephine Zeitlin of Kentfield, California, gave her patio the look of an indoor room without a solid roof. The L-shaped fence, which edges two sides of the patio, combines three distinctly different materials - glass, steel, and redwood.

Glass blocks shelter the patio from wind and obscure a view of the street and a neighbor's house while letting in light. The 6-inch-square blocks are grouped in vertical rows of twos or threes to look like narrow, divided-pane windows and grouted in place between carefully spaced steel posts.

The steel posts were chosen because they won't warp or rot, and because they'll rust to a redwood color. Horizontal redwood beams that cap the posts and the glass-block windows also support overhead joists of the trellis. To add the look of wall paneling to the fence, Zeitlin inserted rough-sawn redwood 1-by-8s here and there between the posts.

A handcrafted door set in the fence to the left of the fireplace and close to the house provides artful access from the patio to an outside driveway. The top of the thick, heavy door curves gracefully beneath an arching lintel of brick set into a redwood beam.

Two cutouts let light through the door: an eye-level square inset with fused glass, and a bottom triangle covered with a grille of thick reinforcing bar. The steel-reinforced opening is perfectly positioned to allow the family dog to watch the comings and goings in the street beyond.