Tag: Glass Rooms

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Without A Plan it’s Just A Wish

Don’t be fooled by January temperatures! If you’re planning a veranda to revamp your outdoor living, and want it ready for the season, it’s time to start the process now.

Planning a glass veranda or garden glass room can take longer than expected. Here are a few tips to get you started, finding the right product ahead of the fast approaching season.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Make research into the different types of veranda designs available, their pros and cons according to your requirement. For instance, is how it looks important to you? Looking closer at different brochures and websites, some brands have noticeably bulky front gutters, or broad/chunky legs, less appealing to the eye. Also look for colour variation. Do you see the same three colours repeated in photos – suggesting that design is less of a factor? At Elegant we make design and good looks a priority. Much can be gleaned taking a closer look at different companies photos, seeing the best of what they’ve done for other customers, whether their profiles look boxy or ‘elegant’ and if their output represents what you most want for own your home.

HAVE RESEARCH INSPIRE YOUR DESIGN
While browsing inspirational photos look for ideas about layout and proportion, intended use and furniture plans, and at colour ideas (it needn’t be white even if your house windows are white). Look at what other people have done and why. When it comes to size, your house doors and windows will usually suggest a good width (it is rare a veranda stops part-way across a window). Desired furniture arrangements can suggest an outward size, modest table seating requiring 2.5m projection, while larger or generous outward sizes can be closer to 4m. Dry access is an essential consideration, looking at our veranda gallery you’ll see that every installation takes in a house door – allowing passage from the home without stepping into rain.

LOCATION, LOCATION
Browsing our ‘before-and-after’ examples (projects) notice how most glass verandas and glass rooms tend to be built over an existing patio table area, spanning existing patio doors. Popularly, they cover the previously established space for a garden table and chairs, whatever spot was already deemed convenient for patio seating and outdoor dining. It is rare that customers will define an all new site, away from the house, or relocate their al-fresco gathering area to another door window or wall. Improving the status quo tends to be more the theme, not changing the established familiar routine.

Doing a little research before talking to companies can help you to speak the same language. And, when finally meeting a representative, having a better idea of what’s available and of what you want will help you to make more informed decisions.

News Blog

Choosing Veranda Decking Boards

Decking options are aplenty when planning your glass veranda, wood no longer being the only choice we’ve seen a revolution in composite deck boards and new 100% plastic decking options.

Decking offers an instant terrace transformation, swiftly remodelling the ground below your glass veranda or glass room. A landscaping feature in itself veranda decking helps better define the outdoor living space and can reshape a ground layout to work better. But which deck board material should you choose? What might be best for you? It can pay to know your options and we offer the following advice to help get your veranda deck ideas nailed down.

Traditional Pressure Treated Timber Decking

Defying the numerous array of modern composite options, pressure treated timber remains the most popular choice by far with a good ¾ of new decks finished in this material. Economy will play a part in this favouritism with softwood timber boards costing significantly less than composite, although many will choose this natural material unpersuaded by plastic composite – just as they might prefer a real-wood lounge floor over wood effect laminate. Timber decking can simply be oiled to a natural finish or stained/painted in a wide colour range of anti-slip decking stains, allowing you to change colour ideas over time (an advantage not possible with composite).

Typically these boards will be made from slow grown European Pine that is pressure treated to resist rot and fungal decay for up to 15 years. Look for a premium version, 28mm thick rather than 20mm, responsibly sourced and FSC certified. Although commonly grooved, these boards can be found in a smooth finish giving a more elegant hardwood look.

Traditional Hardwood and Tropical Wood Decking

Most typically using Red Cedar, expect a hardwood deck to cost several times more than softwood timber. Upmarket and beautiful, usually smooth finished without those decking grooves, other popular wood choices include Garapa, Iroko, Siberian Larch, Ipe, Yellow Balau and Mandioqueira. Both Red Cedar and Siberian Larch give a characterful knotty finish while the others above keep a more uniform grained appearance. Hardwood decking is rated highly durable with a natural resistance to rot and decay and will often be sold as requiring no preservative treatment. That said, periodic treatment will add further protection and help keep its colour.

For time served deck purists Red Cedar will be the obvious choice for quality glass veranda decking. Simply requiring an annual jet washing and then a fresh coat of finish every few years, when first laid we’d advise a clear water repellent wood preservative then on subsequent treatments a semi-transparent tinted stain, maintaining the wood’s natural colour. If you don’t apply a stain the cedar will eventually weather to a soft silver grey.

Wood Fibre Composite Decking

Composite decking has fast grown in popularity with numerous manufacturers appearing in the market. Original ‘Composite’ was composed of wood fibers and recycled plastic, producing a material which one can appreciate is part natural while being extremely weather resistant. The appeal of using composite for your glass veranda or garden glass room is that it is maintenance free, it will never warp, split, splinter or rot. Expect quality composite decking to cost similar to hardwood but with the “fit and forget it” benefit of never requiring treatment.

Manufacturers such as Trex, with their Transcend range, produce composite boards with highly realistic deep grained textures faithfully mimicking the rich colour blends of hardwood. Trex decking boards are solid, not hollow section, they are well constructed and available in square edge design, for traditional surface screw fixing, or a grooved-edge version fixing with hidden brackets for a ‘screw-less’ appearance. At Elegant we have used Trex Transcend ourselves for quality glass veranda decking and can highly recommend.

Of course nothing lasts forever and it is still early days with composite decking; only time will tell how well different manufacturers boards last under long term exposure to UV sunlight and just what degradation or colour fade might be seen. Selecting a quality brand that has invested in research seems prudent, and for instance Trex claim a high-performance protective shell that resists fading.

100% Plastic Composite Decking

Not all composite decking boards are wood composite. Some products are entirely made of plastics including polyurethane, polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride – with no wood fibres at all. If south facing, keep in mind that under the heat of the sun these boards can become very hot (especially below a glass veranda roof or inside a glass room) so that during heat waves you can require shoes. A key appeal of this material is that nothing can ever rot, not even any wood fibres.

Manufacturer’s advice should be noted with some such deck boards requiring their support frame built with its bearers (the support joists) only 35mm apart, this due to the flexible nature of this deck board material. A short sample in your hands may not be enough to tell and you could be surprised at just how ‘bendy’ the full boards appear on delivery. Indeed, resurfacing an existing deck you could get ‘spongy’ results despite it previously feeling perfectly solid with traditional timber boards.

At Elegant we’ve installed polyurethane decking for our glass verandas and garden glass rooms and to stunning results. In particular we would draw attention to Millboard, a British manufacturer, with their unique ‘Weathered Oak’ range producing a highly realistic reclaimed floorboard style of deck. Millboard’s Weathered Oak (as pictured above) is literally moulded from reclaimed timbers for a genuinely authentic look of rustic antiquity. Special headless screws bury invisibly into the surface of these pliant decking boards, completely hiding the fixings.

In Summary

We hope that this article helps your decisions for that new veranda deck. Our simplest advice… if you have the money to spare, if you typically favour old school traditions and the thought of plastic flooring just doesn’t sit well with you, then look at hardwood – and get a carpenter craftsman doing justice to the material. If modernity is more your thing, if fully maintenance-free appeals and you don’t mind a significant budget achieving it, then look at high end composite decking such as the brands mentioned above. Or, if you simply want a deck, something solid to walk on, something that will last for many years and still cost a fraction of composite to re-board anyway (assuming that you are still at the same property after a decade) then don’t discount the humble timber option; still the No.1 popular choice and comfortable underfoot in hot weather, the economical timber option is fully paint stain-able for obliterating future scuffs or to entirely revamp its colour style over time.

News Blog

Garden Veranda vs Glass Garden Rooms

What are the differences? Offering what advantages? In this article we look at why some customers prefer their veranda roof while others favour fully enclosed glass garden rooms.

We all enjoy an Alfresco lifestyle, using the garden as an extension to home living space, evident by the boom in outdoor lounge furniture and innumerable garden living accessories. But no matter how well furnished, an exposed patio has its limitations, requiring protection from the elements if you want an outdoor living space that is always available. Not necessarily down to cost or budget, the most successful installations can be based on lifestyle and intended use, deciding just where the line should be drawn defining an ‘indoors-outdoors’ living space; be it a veranda roof alone, or a full glass room.

Garden Verandas

A garden veranda (glass patio roof) provides permanent protection in a minimalist form, creating a defined furnished spot in which to gather and relax. This option can be seen as being entirely about the garden, enjoying the open outdoor space – outside yet protected! Their fully open nature allows great flexibility with how they can be used; swing hammocks pulled in, chair and table layouts altered, barbecue pushed under, fully adaptable arrangements. Harmoniously blending, with minimal structure (just two or three leg posts) a garden veranda makes the perfect home improvement for garden lovers, barbecue enthusiasts, would-be outdoor livers, or anyone wanting to enjoy their terrace better and more often.

Glass Garden Rooms

Glass garden rooms offer protection from above and the sides, still very much about enjoying your garden they retain a frameless clear view with a real sense of light and space. Then simply roll back your glass doors to make an open veranda! Rooms create a warmer enclosed environment, warmer for evenings and extending use of your terrace throughout the seasons. Garden glass rooms feel a little more ‘indoor’ compared to a veranda, yet still feel out of the house – very much an outdoor sensation feeling fully connected with the garden.

Larger size garden rooms can enjoy multiple options with furniture layout. For smaller rooms it’s always your design but we do recommend having at least one fixed glass wall giving somewhere to place furniture. Protected from the sides, cushioned furniture can sit to the edge yet keep clean and dry. Our glass garden rooms are ideal for home lifestyle lovers, garden admirers, or anyone looking to escape that “cooped-up” feeling stuck in the house, or cooped inside a conservatory.

Which is better? Whichever best suits you! Either way you’ll wish you had added it years ago, giving you more options for how you can enjoy your time at home.