Outdoor kitchens

Start with how you actually cook

The failure mode of outdoor kitchens is building a showpiece that nobody uses. So we start with unglamorous questions: do you cook for four or fourteen? Do you want to be facing your guests or facing the yard? Is the sink genuinely going to be used, or is it a feature that will be winterised eight months a year and resented the rest?

Most Macomb County families are better served by a well-planned grill surround with genuinely usable counter space either side, good storage and a beverage fridge, than by a full outdoor kitchen with a stovetop that gets used twice.

The Michigan constraint

Everything in an outdoor kitchen has to survive being frozen solid and then thawed, repeatedly, while wet.

• Frame. Galvanised steel stud or masonry block. Not wood, which moves and rots.
• Counters. Granite and porcelain handle freeze-thaw well. Many engineered quartz products explicitly do not, and their warranties say so.
• Plumbing. Every water line needs a shutoff and a drain-down point, and it needs to be usable by you in November without a plumber.
• Appliances. Outdoor-rated only, with proper ventilation for gas. Indoor appliances in an outdoor enclosure are a genuine hazard, not just a warranty problem.
• Electrical. GFCI-protected, weather-rated covers, permitted and inspected.

Footings matter more here than anywhere

An outdoor kitchen is heavy, rigid and unforgiving. A patio that settles a quarter inch is invisible; a kitchen that settles a quarter inch has doors that stop closing and a counter with a visible fall. The base under a kitchen run is built to a different standard than the base under the patio it sits on, and that is not somewhere to save money.