Principle #2: Bones Before Beauty

outdoor rooms. Now, for number two, when we build the bones before the beauty, often times people will start with, you know, what are their plants going to be like? Uh what about lights and furniture and decorations? And those are not the priority in any way, shape, or form. What we want to understand is traffic flow. We're trying to figure out elevations and drainage. When we're looking at this thing, we're looking at, you know, what's the right patio size for what you're trying to accomplish? Are we going to need retaining walls? Are we going Do we have utilities that are in the way? and what are the elevations that we need to to take into consideration as we're doing a design like this to make sure that not only is the traffic patterns flowing the right way, but the water is flowing the right way. We need 1 in of drop for every 8 ft. Now, as we look at this property, we have a little bit of a challenge. We have a lot of different elevations established. We have the covered outdoor living zone, and then we have a drop down because we want to get to this water level, but we have not just one, but two different water elevations that we're working with in this case. So, we needed the deck to be able to step down to give us access so that you can put your feet in the water and hang out over the pond. So, this water actually drops down here, so we have an a water elevation here that we've got to deal with. We've got a separate water elevation down here that we've got to deal with that we want to match and blend everything up to. So, when we're designing this thing, the deck is hiding a lot of secrets. Underneath that deck, the pitch is going down, and you can't see it, but any water that flows through that deck is hitting a gradient that allows the water to then be funneled away from the foundation of the house, away from the pond, and down to the both sides of the property. So, we don't want to try to create a swale with just one sense of direction. Whenever we have to course correct water, surface water, we don't want to create a gully washer or a riverbed in just one direction. We want to dissipate that water as fast as possible and get it into different zones so that it can then go away without creating erosion. Now, in this case, the water underneath the deck is designed to flow break this way, and you can see that great elevation change here, and go as fast as possible down to the side where it's now being able to control and channel. And we're using…