West Seattle family turns concrete "blob" into a backyard oasis of water and sound

Lyanda Haupt is quick with adjectives to describe the concrete blight that once occupied a corner of her West Seattle backyard — "kind of '70s," "globular" and, with apologies to Frank Gehry and Paul Allen, sort of like EMP (Experience Music Project).

Now, however, she sits out in her backyard with her laptop, writes nature books, sips tea and listens to the magical gush of a small, two-level waterfall in a green grotto-like setting.

"It's nice in the city to have this sound," Haupt said. "It's like a river."

The concrete blob

Haupt and her husband, Tom Furtwangler, were puzzled by the concrete mass when they bought the farmhouse last year. The cracked, disintegrating concrete, which likely included a water feature at one point, sloped down to a muddy pit. A mossy wall with a rectangular hole guarded the concrete area.

Haupt liked the mossy wall and its carved fish, turtle and reeds but envisioned replacing the concrete "blob" with an architectural waterfall featuring horizontal lines similar to those made famous at Fallingwater by architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

"I didn't want it to look like Home Depot or look like it was supposed to look in the woods," she said. "I wanted it to look ... like humans made it."

A little help from Dad

Haupt enlisted her father, Jerry Haupt, a retired stonemason and contractor, to take apart the corner while preserving some elements of the original structure.

He took a sledgehammer to the blob and discovered basalt rocks set in the soil after removing a pickup's worth of concrete. Jerry Haupt added to the basalt with weathered rocks left over from previous jobs and constructed a natural-looking backdrop of stones to frame the waterfall.

They dredged out the pond, added flat rocks to act as platforms for the waterfall, then installed a water pump that pulls water from the pond up and behind the rocks to the top of the waterfall. A filter purifies water for the koi and goldfish below.

The corner already contained trees that shaded the pond, and Lyanda Haupt added native ferns and other plants to give it an even more luxurious, green feel.

"I really like it coming out of that lower corner and the shadows," Jerry Haupt said.

With her father's donated labor for the three-day project, the main costs were the water pump and one stone, totaling about $500.

Lyanda Haupt admires the original features they kept.

"I just like this one," she said. "You just work with what is here."

Tea, a fire and a waterfall

Now her husband sometimes catches her with her feet up, a fire blazing in a patio fire pit and tea in hand.

Daughter Claire Furtwangler, 7, also plays out here, reaching through the wall's open rectangle to tickle and feed the fish.

The sound of falling water creates an oasis of natural sound that is so loud, Lyanda Haupt sometimes can't hear what someone says from the deck.

She doesn't mind.

"It's almost like we didn't do anything," she said. "It was just there."

Nicole Tsong: 206-464-2150 or ntsong@seattletimes.com