Any room for orangutans with the outdoor room?

You open a glossy magazine or real estate pages what you typically see is lots of greys, tans, and neutral facades with their mono textural renders, and perhaps one facing has some shingling or lattice like detailing added to create visual interest to break the monotone look. So you take a walk through the interior with its chrome finishes sparkling in all directions. The first thing I notice is how extremely neat and uncluttered it all is. Next observation: why not study where the light falls to decide whether the home is 5 or 6 star rating.  Then, you get to the outside and the first thing you think is- Geeh Whiz, the Outdoors are as tidy as the Indoors.  In this modern world with outsourced cleaners and everything done for us, it's not surprising that the view outside is as controlled and contrived as the one inside.  Everything is so shiny looking, every where you look.  You'd be surprised to see any bird droppings anywhere.

So, next, the eye alights on the timber which sprawls in all directions.  Methinks the decking might be spotted gum, red iron bark, sugar gum or locally milled blackbutt. They are meant to be sourced from sustainable sources from within Victoria, or perhaps another Australian state. This could mean reclaimed timber from farms, recycled from industry or sourced from a plantation. What else do these timbers have in common? They come at a premium price, approximately two to three times the price of timber sourced from the third world (in most cases from an old growth forest). Meanwhile the ongoing push is to install outdoor screening, walls, flooring, and other structures.

Now can the reader see the problem that presents itself?  Unless prices of sustainable wood can come down significantly what are we going to see? I leave it to the reader to decide whether we can afford to keep promoting outdoor rooms at the rate we are doing, and what might be the offshoot of speaking of outdoor rooms as sustainable. I don't know the word that means the opposite of serendipitous. Unexpected bad
result. Often a well intentioned marketing campaign ends up having the opposite result.  It's only the big name promoters with their big name clients who can afford to use these 'safe' timbers on a large scale.

Next up will try to source figures of how much habitat supporting merbau and other old growth timbers are getting in to the country compared with five to ten years ago. Watch out lovely orangutans, the Outdoor Room installers are moving in.