Back before the age of air conditioners, heating up your house in the summer was a bad plan, which meant cooking indoors was definitely out. In the early 20th century it was common place to have an outdoor kitchen and an indoor kitchen which would allow you to switch cooking location depending on the season. No doubt it was an inconvenience and when heating your house (by cooking) while simultaneously cooling it (with an air conditioner) became an option, the outdoor kitchen fell out of style. If the last sentence sounds a little ridiculous to you, then you will understand where we were coming from when we decided we wanted to build our own outdoor kitchen.
Typically I am opposed to duplicating room functions. Nothing drives me more crazy then having both a family room and a living room, for example. But besides the major heating and cooling benefit or having two kitchens, an outdoor kitchen also allows you to drastically increase the amount of time you spend outdoors in the summer.
We had spent a few summers limping along with a lone barbecue as out "outdoor kitchen". I made a valiant effort at cooking everything from cookies to stir fry on the barbecue, but it had some major down sides. It doesn't maintain temperature, so if I was baking I had to watch it constantly (something I am terrible at). If I had enough baking that I needed to cook on the bottom rack, the food was always burnt. It only had one side burner and it tilted alarmingly every time you set something heavy on it (like a vat of canning). And if it was raining, all bets were off. And so, when a great outdoor gas stove complete with griddle and oven fell into our lap this winter the "outdoor kitchen" was born....or at least its vision. (I have lots of visions. They turn into lots of work for Gus.)
Vision: We would cover the deck with a roof, so that we could continue to eat and cook outside even if it was raining.
Problem: We want to put a lot of windows in the back of our house in the future to let in the light and beautiful backyard views. A roof would destroy those. Also, I wanted to grown my grape up over the deck and a roof would shade it.
Solution: We put on a clear roof to let the sun through for light and for the grape. And we sloped the roof toward the house (instead of away form it) to take in the nice backyard views.
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| You can barely notice the roofing in this picture, but it is there. Building this was a bit of a challenge for Gus. He made sure to screw on the roofing on the upper edge when I was not around to have a heart attack. |
Result: We kept the existing trellis structure to build the roof and the result was a big beam in the middle of our view....that's not so great. Also, it doesn't keep the rain off as well as we had hoped. We anticipated some rain would get in with a driving rain...but we figured we could sit near the back of the deck closer to the house. We did not anticipate that in a hard rain, water would bounce of the house roof and into the back of our rain sheltered area. So in a storm we have a 1 foot strip down the middle of the deck that stays dry.... Oh well...we will install a bar.
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| The view from the house. Note the big beam in our way. |
Vision 2: We would get the huge heavy gas stove up on the deck and hook it up instead of the barbecue. Then we will build counters out of leftover materials to make a usable kitchen.
Problem: The stove was roughly the weight and size of a large elephant.
Solution: We will push really hard when we move it and hope the stairs don't break.
Result: This actually went well. Gus and his dad got the stove on the deck and nobody died. We built beautiful counter made from boards leftover from the old deck roof, left over concrete form plywood and metal drip pans we inherited years ago. The counter were a smashing success and the gas elements and grill are amazing to cook with. The oven doesn't work so well. You can't tell what temperature its at and it doesn't regulate well....we are still working on that issue.
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| Counters and gas stove |
In spite of the draw backs, the kitchen is a smashing success. After the roof was built, we cooked and ate almost every meal outdoors (rain or shine). The roof soars above us giving a wonderful airy feel and the new stove and griddle handles like a charm. Too bad we finished it in time for the summer to be over....
