Homeowner Forum / Lawn and Garden / June 2007

In the same vein from the Sat. June 30, NY Times' locally published
"Fish Wrap":

Backyard living spaces falling out of favor
Additions hard to maintain and attract vermin, snakes

By JUNE FLETCHER
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Rick Chapman didn't factor in the pigeons.

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The retired Las Vegas businessman spent $200,000 on his back yard,
reconfiguring the swimming pool and making room for bubbling fountains
and a waterfall, a full kitchen with a 14-foot barbecue island, a slate
and cement deck and a 37-inch plasma TV. It was perfect for hosting
outdoor dinner parties.

The local pigeons also appreciated the improvements and began roosting
over -- and fouling -- the deck, forcing Chapman to fight back with a
pellet gun and spikes. Other problems developed, including desert dust
baking onto the outdoor furniture. Chapman says taking care of the yard
has become pure drudgery -- especially in the 110-degree heat. "It's
more work than the indoors," he says.

Outdoor rooms, one of the decade's most visible symbols of excess, have
been a bonanza for manufacturers of everything from $3,700 waterproof
pool tables to $130 patio umbrellas that emit a cooling mist. About 1
million households have outdoor kitchens, with such features as built-in
grills and cooktops, outdoor stereos and TVs, refrigerators -- even
dishwashers, according to StandPoint, a research company in Atlanta. But
some homeowners say they're falling out of love with their expensively
furnished back yards, which require hours of upkeep and costly repair.
Others are abandoning the rooms altogether.

The backyard misery has been a boon for exterminators and repair shops.
Fire ants nest in speakers and televisions. (They're attracted to the
hum and vibration.) Squirrels chew on the arms of teak furniture and on
speaker wires. When expensive electronics come into contact with water,
dust, pollen and heat, burnouts and other problems can occur. Over the
past two years, such issues have boosted service requests at Walt's TV &
Home Theater in Tempe, Ariz., by 400 percent.

Upkeep disenchantment

Among the homeowners heading back indoors are Jeff Ullrich, a
Hightstown, N.J., accountant, and his wife, Alixandre. The couple
invested $25,000 a year and a half ago on a gray aluminum patio set, a
hot tub with CD player and stereo, a fountain and a fire pit. But Jeff
Ullrich says the fountain jets kept getting clogged with berries dropped
by birds and the furniture had to be hosed down every week. Now the
Ullrichs, who had a baby six months ago, rarely use the outdoor space --
it's just too much work. They've covered the hot tub and turned off the
fountain. And the fire pit? Never been used.

"I don't want to get it dirty and then have to clean it," Jeff Ullrich
says.

Such disenchantment is starting to have an effect on furniture
retailers. In its May catalog, Smith & Hawken took 20 percent to 25
percent off its outdoor living room collection, substantial reductions
during the peak selling season. A spokeswoman for the retailer says the
season got off to a slow start, in part because of rainy weather.
Similarly, in response to slow spring sales, Restoration Hardware has
cut prices on some of its outdoor lines.

Prices for their teak and steel Stinson collection, for instance, have
been reduced as much as 34 percent.

Inventories of outdoor furniture are overstocked and consumers
"apathetic," says Jerry Epperson, an analyst with Mann, Armistead &
Epperson Ltd. in Richmond, Va. He predicts retail sales will be flat
this year. "The consumer is tapped out," he says.

David Kennedy, vice president of sales for Brown Jordan, a division of
BJI of St. Augustine, Fla., says the luxury outdoor furniture company is
dealing with the current buying climate by ramping up the number of new
collections it's offering -- five this year, including a $9,000
six-piece bronze metallic sectional -- compared to three last year.
"This is one way to make sure retailers pick us up," Kennedy says. He
says year-to-date sales are up 5 percent over a year ago.

Not every homeowner is beating a retreat. Cal Spa, a Pomona company that
produces "home resort" products ranging from $3,500 hot tubs to $11,000
fireplaces, has seen sales double since 2002. Atlanta-based Home Depot,
which doesn't disclose product category sales numbers, says its outdoor
category, including gazebos and those misting patio umbrellas, is one of
the store's strongest. And the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association
reports that a record 17 million grills were shipped in 2006, up 15.2
percent from the year before.

Of course, all that stuff has to be cleaned. Aerospace consultant Joel
Johnson kicked off the summer hand-scrubbing sticky yellow pollen from
the intricate scrolls on the aluminum frames of his $5,000 patio set
from Frontgate, which he bought last year for his Hollywood, Md.,
vacation home. The process took him three hours. "It wasn't much fun,"
he says.

Scott Bolozky, a St. Louis jewelry store owner who spent $70,000 over
the past two years on his back yard, has to take out his blower or power
washer every day to clean off his new brick fireplace, gazebo and patio
set. Recently, he found himself on his hands and knees with a hot iron
and old newspapers, trying to blot up candle wax that had dripped on the
45-foot-long deck made out of Trex, a composite of wood and recycled
plastic grocery bags. "The stain is still there," he sighs.

A study published in the March edition of the Journal of Family and
Economic Issues suggests it isn't uncommon for families to abandon their
decked-out yards. Researchers at UCLA tracked the activities of 24
middle-class L.A. households. They found that though the back yards were
equipped with pools, patios, grills and, in one case, a skateboard ramp,
children spent little time playing in them and adults rarely used them.
More than half of the families spent only "negligible" amounts of time
in their yards, mostly doing chores; some people never set foot in them
at all. The authors concluded that despite the considerable investments
that these families had made in their surroundings, they "largely admire
them from afar -- from inside the house or in their mind's eye while
doing other things."

Magnets for pests

Maintenance headaches have also taken some of the glamour out of the
outdoor good life. Although manufacturers say they're using heavier
gauges of rust-proof metals like aluminum, and finishes and fabrics that
are supposed to stand up to damaging ultraviolet rays and other
elements, the chances are good that many pieces will eventually wind up
in a repair shop or having to be replaced, says Jennifer Litwin, who
reviews furniture for Consumers Digest.

Richard Weisman, owner of Advanced Pest Control in Houston, says that
outdoor living rooms attract all kinds of pests. Greasy food remnants in
stoves and grills, for example, attract rats, which in turn attract
snakes. Weisman gets three or four calls a week from alarmed homeowners
who have found sated copperheads and other serpents sunning on their
decks and patios. His business for the first six months of this year is
up 18 percent over the year-earlier period. Exterminator John Van
Galder, in Orlando, Fla., reports similar complaints, including one in
which eight roof rats moved into a client's propane-powered barbecue
grill. Business in 2007 is up 25 percent over last year, he says.

Then there are the issues that inevitably arise when electronics are
left out in a downpour or hung out to fry in the sun. Bryan Sunda, owner
of Orange County Speaker, a sales and repair company in Garden Grove,
says the outdoor speakers they see for service are usually ruined by
rust or completely filled with water from being left out in the rain or
near sprinklers. Although some are advertised as waterproof, he says
most of them aren't.

Rockustic, a Denver company, makes outdoor speakers that come hidden in
fake casings, including faux coconuts and rocks, and cost from $500 to
$5,000 a pair. They're described on the company's Web site as "100
percent water and weatherproof" and carry a limited lifetime warranty.
But if they're caught in an extended rainstorm or set in a low, wet spot
in the yard, they can corrode or be damaged, says Chris Clark, director
of sales and marketing.

"Mother Nature is extremely hard to combat," he says.

There are other threats to outdoor gadgetry, says Rob Hendley, the chief
executive officer of Walt's TV & Home Theater. One client's brand-new
plasma TV was ruined when a friend accidentally spilled beer on it. The
new Wii golf game that follows the movement of players as they practice
their swings is also a threat to TVs placed outside: The controllers
tend to fly out of the slippery hands of pool-party guests and smash
into the screens.

"It happens every week," Hendley says.
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