Kebony Backyard

When a young Canadian family enlisted Yuill McGregor and his team at North on Sixty, a Toronto-based design/build firm, to help re-imagine their urban backyard, their goal was to channel the feeling of spending time in a northern cottage. To create the family’s oasis, McGregor incorporated a number of features into the design, including a gunite pool, a Scandinavian-style sauna, and a compact outdoor kitchen.

But the foundation of the space is the expansive grade-level deck that surrounds the pool, which is clad with Kebony decking. The Kebony modification process is used almost exclusively with softwood lumber—in this case, southern yellow pine—and involves impregnating the wood with preservatives and bio-based furfuryl alcohol. Then the wood is heated, which evacuates the alcohol and polymerizes the other elements in the cell walls to make the wood denser, more stable, and less hygroscopic. McGregor says that the modified wood won’t splinter and stays relatively cool in the hot summer sun—good attributes for use around a pool.