AT HOME: Outdoor renovation gives Hill Country home fresh appeal.
Before moving to Texas, Dan and Carla Carlson and their two kids had lived in Long Beach, California, in a home on a 3,700-squarefoot lot. So when they moved to the Hill Country, they decided to “Texas size” things and purchased a home on 5.8 acres.
While the 40-year-old house hadn’t been updated in years and the yard looked like it had never been landscaped, the couple fell in love with its potential.
“We loved the location, the pool and the large windows in back of the house,” said Dan Carlson, a petroleum refining consultant. “It had good bones, although we knew we’d have to do a lot of updating inside and out, to make it livable and comfortable, the way we wanted.”
After spending the first two years redoing the interior, the couple turned their attention to the outside.
Both the front and back yards needed work. Oak tree roots had shifted the asphalt driveway so it looked like a roller coaster, the Saltillo tile on the back porch clashed with the home’s Hill Country aesthetic and the deck around the pool was so 1980s, it might as well have been wearing leg warmers.
Dan Carlson said he doesn’t think the outside, particularly the backyard pool area, had ever been landscaped. While they wanted the renovation to highlight the pool, they also wanted it to be “comfortable, deer tolerant, relatively low maintenance.”
When they called in landscape architect Matt Stevens and asked him to develop a plan, they were happy — and relieved — to see him recommend landscaping some, but not all of it. The plan covered the property from the front gates to the pool in back and was divided in phases so it would be more manageable.
“We did not want to maintain 5.8 acres of landscape,” said Carlson. “Matt’s vision of a landscape with both a native and manicured landscape aligned well with ours.”
A Texas A&M graduate with a degree in landscape architecture, Stevens recently received two gold awards for landscape design and residential installation over $150,000 from the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association.
The first and most dramatic change Stevens made was to the 25-footlong pool that had an old fiberglass diving board, a bright blue waterslide and other features that needed updating and was surrounded by a dated aggregate deck that in places was only a couple of feet wide.
“It was so narrow, you almost had to turn sideways to keep from falling into the water,” said Dan Carlson.
To do that, Stevens overlaid the existing aggregate deck with Oklahoma flagstone in various shades of brown. This allowed them to widen the deck, adding more space for chairs, a dining table, even an outdoor bar should the Carlsons ever be able to entertain again.
In the pool itself, they installed small, blue decorative tiles to outline the steps and added benches. For a humorous touch they had a happy blue dolphin, also made of tiles, installed at the pool bottom, with darker tiles forming the dolphin’s shadow to make it look 3D. And they removed the black lap lane the previous owner had added.
Stevens built a limestone retaining wall about 3 feet high along that side, backfilling it with topsoil and mulch. Incorporating existing mountain laurel and vitex trees, he added native, deer- and droughtresistant plantings such as Texas sage, muhly grass and firecracker plants. This both formed a visual and physical barrier to the drop-off and concealed a storage shed at the far end of the pool.
“The kids enjoyed having the pool out back, especially over the summer when everyone was spending so much time at home,” said Dan Carlson. “They’d have a few friends over, where they’d stay outside, social distancing.”
The existing walkway between the back patio and the pool was nothing but a sad, single line of square stepping stones. So Stevens replaced that with a wider walkway of Oklahoma flagstones, looselaid for a natural Hill Country look.
“We were trying to soften the hardscape, so we didn’t mortar them together,” Stevens said. “Instead, we left it so there’s grass growing between the stones so they have more give and can shift as the oak trees grow.”
The Carlsons also renovated the back patio area, removing the Saltillo tile already there and replacing one portion with Oklahoma flagstone to tie in with the pool and the other with cedar decking. “That was Matt’s idea to create some visual contrast,” Carla Carlson said.
One curious feature they also addressed was the fact that there was no way to get down from the second-floor balcony without walking back into the house and using the stairs. “It made no sense to us,” Dan Carlson said.
They found a wrought iron manufacturer that had a spiral staircase that had been custom built for a job that was canceled. “They were very happy to make some minor modification to make it fit the space,” said Dan Carlson.
Also on the porch, they installed an outdoor kitchen, complete with concrete countertops, and a built-in grill, refrigerator and an ice maker.
They continued the backyard theme in the front yard house, replacing the mishmash of materials that made up the driveway and the entryway — asphalt, concrete, yet more Saltillo tile — with a more uniform look, laying additional Oklahoma flagstone for the portion of the circular driveway running in front of the house and to the front door.
“It looks much more together now,” said Carla Carlson.
While the majority of the front yard has been turned over to native grasses, sprinkled throughout are droughttolerant plantings and some strategically placed boulders. “We wanted to retain a natural look,” Stevens said. “Those elements are meant to look like they’ve been there forever.”
The curb appeal is much improved. The native grasses give way to manicured lawngrass and bedding areas. Potted plantings accentuate the front entryway and the path leading to it.
After about two years, the $600,000 outdoor renovation project was just coming to a conclusion in April when the pandemic struck and the Carlson’s plans to enjoy their outdoor oasis with family and friends came crashing down. They’re hoping at some point they’ll be able to do that, but in the meantime, they’re enjoying it as much as they can.
“The pandemic has been great for having a lot of solitary pool time,” said Carla Carlson. “It truly looks magical.”