Home and Garden Show, Celina Record

The great outdoors Outdoor living spaces shine at Collin County Spring Home & Garden Show Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com Feb 12, 2016 If groundhog Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction earlier this month proves true, then it may nearly be time to dust off the ol’ grill and raise the flowered patio umbrella in anticipation of warmer weather. It seems the timing couldn’t be better for the seventh-annual Collin County Spring Home & Garden Show, scheduled for Feb. 12-14 at the Allen Events Center, during which many of the latest outdoor living accessories and design items will be displayed. Interior designer Jeff Lewis, star of Bravo network’s reality series “Flipping Out,” is scheduled to participate in Q&A sessions at noon and 3 p.m. on Feb. 13. Other show highlights will include a food truck roundup featuring the Lean Machine and Kona Ice rigs near the event center’s entrance. There will also be a pet adoption area and in the Art, Gift Gourmet & Go Texan area, sweet treats, handcrafted jewelry and other items will be available for purchase. The show will feature hundreds of vendors displaying their wares designed to update, upgrade and beautify interior and exterior living areas. Last year, online home and remodeling website Houzz conducted its Landscaping and Garden Trends study. More than half of the 1,600 U.S. homeowners surveyed who were planning to or in the process of upgrading their home’s outdoor living space said they intended to spend six or more hours there each week. Forty-seven percent of respondents planned to primarily utilize the area for entertaining. Those results don’t surprise Steve Heahy, a business partner with Unlimited Outdoor Living. The company, based in Burleson, will be among the vendors at the show. “What we find … is that people are more inclined to have family and friends over, particularly if they have an outdoor area in which to cook and prepare [food] and entertain,” Heahy said. Also, because people aren’t traveling as often or spending as extravagantly on vacations as in years past, “They’re spending more time and money on creating that [entertaining] space in and around their own homes.” Heahy said his company specializes in creating custom outdoor living areas for customers. Most of the projects they tackle usually cost upwards of $25,000. “Typically, people want an outdoor kitchen,” Heahy said, “so we design it to have the particular features and size that a customer is looking for.” He said he recently designed an outdoor kitchen for a client that featured a large grill, a stovetop, a sink with hot and cold running water and a refrigerator. “Then, because they wanted more shaded area, we created an extension to their roof to give them more outdoor comfort,” Heahy said. “You don’t want to be out in the 100-degree temperatures in the direct sunlight when you’re trying to enjoy yourself.” Recently, Heahy said he has received multiple requests to build wood-burning pizza ovens in backyards at a cost of around $8,000 each. “These things are designed to look almost like a large fireplace where they’re enclosed. You fire it up and put your pizza in there and cook it,” he explained. A less-costly alternative, he said, are pre-built pizza ovens that his company imports from Italy. “We can get that for less than half the cost of doing it the other way.” Homeowners are also interested in outdoor areas that flow seamlessly off the back of their abodes. For those projects, Heahy said his company can attach a patio-like structure to a house’s existing roof, “so it looks like it was built as part of that original house.” The structure is designed to be waterproof and accommodate large-screen televisions that draw “everybody out there, whether it’s to enjoy a ballgame or a concert or a movie,” he said. Besides providing a place to relax and unwind, Heahy said outdoor living spaces also work to bring families together. “What I see happening here is a lot of people are interested in getting their kids more involved with the family rather than having their nose stick in an electronic [device] of some sort,” he said. “There’s more interaction. Maybe they go outside with Mom or Dad and throw a ball around. … You’re creating a different environment when you get them outdoors.”