Patio Party In Your Backyard
One of the hottest home trends this year is the rise of backyard dinner parties and game nights. With the prominence of telecommuting, staycations, and other home-centric lifestyles, many people have re-discovered the charm and fun of entertaining guests at home.
Surprisingly, in the age of smartphones, Netflix, and Xbox, “old fashioned” board games are more popular than ever, with party-oriented board games seeing a 13% increase in sales in 2017 to $345 million nationwide, and revenue is expected to top $400 million for 2019.
Backyard dinner parties and game nights are getting more and more popular despite living in a time of the highest availability of affordable consumer electronics and internet access.
As an extension of the house, the backyard has become an unofficial extra room to the home, expanding the usable square footage significantly in the process. One of the most crucial parts of having an enviable outdoor entertainment space is starting from the ground up, literally. Whether it’s a traditional wooden deck or beautiful stamped concrete, it all starts with transforming your backyard lawn into a prime entertaining space by adding a patio and/or walkway.
Adding A Backyard Patio Increases Your Home’s Resale Value
Creating a beautiful concrete patio space in your backyard is truly a win-win for a homeowner. You win the first time around by having a new extension of your home that you can use for blissful relaxation while home alone and for a prime party spot with friends and family. You win the second time around because it can help put more money in your pocket when you decide to sell your house. Homelight.com recently noted that, “for the past seven consecutive years, residential architects have ranked outdoor living areas (such as patios) as the no. 1 ‘special function’ room among consumers.” And according to Today.com, “a landscaped patio raises the value of your home by 12.4 percent. Today’s best-selling improvement is a backyard terrace that abuts the family room.” So, landscaped patio areas are not only in high demand, they are a great way to add more valuable equity to your home portfolio.
Entertaining In Your Backyard Patio Space Is A Green Alternative To Going Out On The Town
Let’s face it. If you have a large screen TV (which are now less expensive than ever), high-speed internet, and the UberEats app, you can have a fantastic dinner and movie date watching the latest blockbusters in high definition while eating gourmet restaurant food from the comfort of your own air-conditioned living room. The need to actually fight your way through traffic, find parking, wait in line, deal with a crowded and loud theater and restaurant is becoming less and less of a necessity every passing day.
Yes, actual human contact is good every now and then, but don’t feel guilty for spending more time at home because hosting house parties in your new backyard is actually helping to save energy. Studies have shown that each year, “despite increasing the amount of residential energy demand, the decrease in travel and use of non-residential spaces was responsible for a net 1,700 trillion bTU in energy savings for the United States,” according to a PHYS.org report.
Save Even More Money With These Simple Steps
One of the ways you can save money on entertaining at home is to make sure that your house is heating and cooling itself at peak efficiency. One of the easiest ways to cut down on your heating and cooling bills is to install an AI master thermostat like Google’s Nest or the Honeywell Lyric T5. This will help you cut down on heating and cooling waste as it learns the best times to regulate your home’s temperature.
You can also save money by making sure that your home’s attic is properly regulating heat. If your attic and crawlspace area is trapping heat due to poor circulation, you may be spending hundreds of dollars more each year unnecessarily. One of the best ways to cut down on this is to make sure your attic is properly ventilated. You can calculate your home’s ventilation needs using an online calculator and then take steps to get proper vents installed, thus making entertaining at home an even better alternative than going out!
Conclusion
A backyard gathering or BBQ is a great way to save money, have fun, and do a little bit of good for the environment. You can make the most of your backyard entertainment space by installing a beautiful patio area made of patterned concrete. This will give you the ultimate hangout space that is not only fun but beautiful to look at, and let’s not forget that it may even increase your home’s resale value to boot. So, gather your friends, spread out a board game, and toast to re-discovering a fine family tradition: The backyard party.
About The Author
This is a guest post from Karen Boos, a licensed real estate agent headquartered in Boise, Idaho. When she’s not helping people find their dream home or sell their current home to help achieve their financial goals, she’s walking the local greenbelt with her binoculars watching for new and exciting birds to drop by. You can learn more about Karen at www.karenboos.com.