When you are designing an outdoor kitchen, the first major decision to make is the type of grill or grills you are going to use. Once the built in grill has been decided and the various accessories chosen, the space a overall shape of the grill island should be considered. Often the shape the outdoor kitchen takes will be chosen by the space where the island will be constructed. Your specific use can create the shape, especially if you will use the counter for seating and serving guests. There are some obvious generalizations that evolve in outdoor kitchen design that we can discuss but the important result for you is to consider the decisions that work for other homes to allow your imagination to go to work designing your own perfect space.
Your outdoor kitchen design must serve your cooking needs but the grill island shape must also address your social needs. The images on the right are all in the same community, same type of home with the same layout. All three of these custom-built outdoor kitchens were built in essentially the same space. However, although the space was considered the individual needs of the homeowner make each space useful in different ways.
One outdoor kitchen may be used as a full kitchen with top range burners, grill, built in kegerator, sink, trash access and plenty of seating facing the television. This design has guests and home parties in mind.
Another design may need much less and just a grill with a lot of counter space for preparation and serving is used. The backyard chef allowing themselves a beautiful space to cook complimenting the lines of the home.
Third a homeowner who needs less seating with a sink, refrigerator and built in grill is designed more for a family dinner together out doors.
The same space and similar built in grills and accessories became very different outdoor kitchens based on the imagination of the homeowners needs.
It is important that you consider your needs when designing your own custom outdoor kitchen. Imagine the last time you used your grill and ate outside. What could have been better? Where did you need more space for preparation or for seating? Often I am in a customers backyard and s/he will walk me over to several neighboring backyard so I can see what other people have done with the same space available to this homeowner. I work to impress the necessity to consider your own habits and usage in the design rather than how good you will look to your neighbors.
The easiest grill island to design is straight. The idea of the straight grill island is similar to the cart grill that stays in one spot of the yard. Instead of a standardized cart grill in the same spot, a little imagination can help create a grill island with a lot of space to serve and prepare your food for grilling. Most of these designs have a wall of the house that is not being used. Often I will look for the spot where electricity and plumbing is stubbed outside the wall or running in the wall to a kitchen or bathroom.
This island was obviously built to fit the space onside to walls inside a covered patio. The depth of the walls did not allow for the grill we chose so we invented a decorative movement that gives us the depth we need for the infrared grill and gives some character to an otherwise straight run of stucco. Electricity and plumbing were already available and the window placement seems to be made for the positioning of the grill centered in the outdoor kitchen. We covered up some damages to the wall with a backsplash and placed extra electrical boxes to allow for future use of lights, coffee pots, rotisserie motor and blenders.
The second unit looks like it is mounted to the wall of the house but it is not. This unit is built to be self-supportive freestanding and was anchored to the wall of the house which does not extend to the end of the bbq grill island We built the wall for the backsplash to allow electricity and lighting to be installed and to hide the pool pump that had been placed just outside the screen. The poorly planned eyesore was hidden by the beautiful backsplash of their outdoor kitchen and by matching the stucco exactly, it appears to have been built with the original home plans.
This third example is like the first one built to fit a particular space under the patio roof. The original cart grill was kept here in close proximity to the dining area outside. We agreed the space was convenient and electricity was already there for the refrigerator. The dining table placement just inside the patio and the walkway out of the gate had made the space pretty unusable. The grill island turned a dead zone into a beautiful focal point of the patio.
No comments:
Post a Comment