Wherever you live in Southern California, from Riverside, Moreno Valley, Redlands to Irvine, it’s time to clean up your yard, your outdoor kitchen, and be sure all your landscape lighting is working. Now that we have changed our clocks to daylight savings time, we can spend more time outside in the late afternoon and evening. Don’t have an outdoor kitchen? More and more families are adding outdoor kitchens to their list of must haves. Andrew Landscape Construction has built outdoor kitchens and bars throughout Orange County and the Inland Empire. Some people want the works. You know, the refrigerator, the sink, the microwave, the beer tap and don’t forget we also need the barbeque. And of course, you can do more with storage cabinets and even warming drawers.
Andrew Landscape has been building outdoor dining and living areas for years, long before it was the “cool thing” to have. The styles, sizes and accessories can go on forever. The most important thing is to select a barbeque large enough to accommodate your larger parties and after that, all the rest is up to you. One client had us build an outdoor kitchen that had a gas barbeque and a charcoal burning barbeque because he used both. If you have the space, you may want to include a bar top. The bar top offers a wonderful place for people to hang out and keep the cook company. You might also consider a cover of some type, at least over the bar area. If you want company while you’re cooking, you need to provide some shade while they chat and enjoy their drinks and perhaps appetizers.
We prefer to build most our outdoor kitchens and bars with block and mortar construction, but it certainly isn’t the only way to go. A block and mortar construction will do very well with all the abuse one can dish out. When we construct a kitchen with block and mortar we are able to install a poured in place concrete countertop. Colored acid stains can be used on the newly poured concrete to create a very unique and beautiful top. Each countertop is always one of a kind. When we finish, you’ll know you will never see another exactly like it. But, and this is a big but. Sometimes we just can’t build it that way. Here in Riverside we are currently building an outdoor kitchen and bar top on top of a wood deck. We also built the wood deck, so we really beefed up the structure of the deck to accommodate the kitchen and bar. And of course there’s no way we could build the kitchen with block and mortar. The weight of the kitchen on the wood structure would be very unsafe.
This time we built the kitchen by welding together 1& 1/2” steel tubing to create the shape and size we were looking for. I do have to admit, this method did provide for a very clean look inside the storage area of the kitchen. After welding together all the pieces we had a big box with openings for barbeque, doors and a refrigerator. Then it was time to take it in to be powder coated to help it stand up to the weather and rust. It was then time to cover the whole unit with ½” cement board. With this kitchen we’re still not sure exactly how the sides will be finished or what type of countertop we’ll put on, but I know the finished product will be beautiful. The sides could be stuccoed to match the house, or we could stone veneer the sides. We also like a very nice acrylic stone material finish that doesn’t add as much weight as the stone veneer. Our countertop can be just about anything but poured in place concrete. That would be way too much weight for our steel frame and also our wood deck. When this one is finished I’ll post some photos. Please give us a call if you’d like to have your own outdoor living space. Andrew Landscape Construction would be more than happy to help you plan your own outdoor kitchen, bar or maybe just a nice living space. Happy Summer Evenings!