Too Much Upkeep: Homeowners
Tire of Their Outdoor Rooms
By June Fletcher
From The Wall Street Journal Online
Rick Chapman didn't factor in the pigeons.
The retired Las Vegas businessman spent $200,000 on his backyard, 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 television. It was perfect for hosting outdoor dinner parties.
The local pigeons also appreciated the improvements and began roosting over -- and fouling -- the deck, forcing Mr. Chapman to fight back with a pellet gun and spikes. Other problems developed, including desert dust baking onto the outdoor furniture. Mr. 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 one 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 firm in Atlanta. But some homeowners say they're falling out of love with their expensively furnished backyards, 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%.
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 Mr. 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," Mr. Ullrich says.
Such disenchantment is starting to have an effect on furniture retailers. In its May catalog, Smith & Hawken took 20% to 25% 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%.
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 with three last year. "This is one way to make sure retailers pick us up," Mr. Kennedy says. He says year-to-date sales are up 5% over a year ago.
Not every homeowner is beating a retreat. Cal Spa, a Pomona, Calif., firm 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% 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 backyard, 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 the University of California at Los Angeles tracked the activities of 24 middle-class L.A. households. They found that though the backyards 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."
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.
Such repairs don't come cheap. Chair Care Co., an outdoor furniture refinisher in New Haven, Conn., generally charges from 35% to 50% of the initial cost of an item to restore patio furniture, ranging from sandblasting a frame and reapplying a powder-coat finish to replacing worn cushions. ChairCarePatio.com, a Dallas store that repairs furniture and sells replacement parts, says that it can't match seat fabrics or vinyl webbing that have been faded by the sun, and that it won't replace canopies for inexpensive swings bought at big-box retailers like Wal-Mart or Lowe's. "It will cost more for us to make a new canopy than what you paid for the swing new," the Web site warns.
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. Mr. 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% over the year-earlier period. John Van Galder, an Orlando, Fla., exterminator, 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% 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 firm in Garden Grove, Calif., 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 firm, makes outdoor speakers that come hidden in fake casings, including coconuts and rocks, and cost from $500 to $5,000 a pair. They're described on the company's Web site as "100% 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 televisions 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," Mr. Hendley says. |
