Post #705215 by congawa on Mon, Jan 20, 2014 5:44 PM

After 18 years in our house in NE Long Beach, many of which featured my wife and I discussing what we were going to do about our patio and backyard areas, we decided to bring Bamboo Ben in to work his magic -- the result is "The Pahoehoe Hut."

First, here are some shots of the area before Ben started work in October 2013.

Our house was built in 1950. When we moved in in 1995, there were several original owners, all of whom had worked at nearby Douglas Aircraft (later McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing) for many decades. Several additions were made to the house circa 1957, including an enclosed patio where the original outside patio stood.

Here is the enclosed patio before transformation--the yellow is the stucco that was originally part of the outside of the house. The white is the open-beam wood ceiling added circa 1957. Louvered windows with a brick base (barely visible in this photo) filled in most of the area, except for two large picture windows on the side (behind camera). We replaced a sliding glass door with french doors several years ago.

Outside the enclosed patio is a lanai deck with wood frame and aluminum roof.

This shot looks from the backyard towards the lanai and enclosed patio.

The backyard is mostly concrete. We had planted plumeria and several hibiscus trees at left...we removed the hibiscus just before Ben began work. There was formerly a tall palm tree in the corner by the neighbor's garage, which we eventually had to remove. The dirt area in the back corner became a major part of Bamboo Ben's addition.

This shot looks across the backyard toward the neighbor's detached garage. In the foreground is a lime tree we planted in the last couple of years. In the background is a blood orange tree we planted a few years before that (along with a Tiki Farm Tangaroa Tiki Chiminea).

Here's the back of the yard after the hibiscus trees were removed:

Here's the planter area beside our garage, before Ben began work.

And another shot of the blood orange tree and other vegetation, before Ben's Lava Flow started!

So like the beginning of a James Michener novel, this is the part about the period when dinosaurs roamed the earth, before volcanic eruptions altered the landscape. Enter Bamboo Ben. My wife and I originally were mainly interested in having him work on the enclosed patio and lanai. However--having seen the great lava flow at The Breezeway, I mentioned to Ben that we might be interested in incorporating something along those lines. When he first saw our backyard, he said, "You have a lot of room here...", and his creativity took over. Up next, the build starts.

Caltiki Brent

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[ Edited by: congawa 2014-01-20 17:44 ]