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Use paving stone for the living area around your outdoor kitchen for significant cost savings.
The Gellers team from left to right: Michael Patton, foreman, Matt Bell, owner, Braeden Guenther, foreman, and Brandon Sutherland, project manager.
A grill island with space for preparing food has a built-in look.
This outdoor dream-kitchen is complete with a cabana to keep the elements out.
The scorching temperatures at the start of this week gave Manitobans their first taste of summer. Whether the weather is smoking hot or on the cool side, the backyard is the place to be for small-scale gatherings with family members and close friends — with plans, of course, for larger gatherings in the future when lockdown rules ease.
If you enjoy cooking and eating outdoors, Matt Bell can help you organize the outdoor kitchen of your dreams. Bell owns Gellers Design/Build/Landscape, a family run business that designs, builds, landscapes, and maintains stunning outdoor spaces. Four of Gellers’ design-build projects took home awards from the Manitoba Nursery and Landscape Association’s Awards of Excellence in both 2020 and 2021.
The first step in planning your outdoor kitchen, says Bell, involves thinking about how you want to use your space. "If you want to use your outdoor space to cook and you enjoy staying outdoors for most of the day, then a full outdoor kitchen is something to consider," says Bell. "If you are mainly interested in being able to cook your steaks outdoors, enjoy a beer, but prefer to dine indoors, then a grill island probably makes more sense than a full outdoor kitchen."
A grill island can be as simple as having a semi-permanent place in your backyard where you do your grilling, says Bell. Building a small granite countertop with matching pillars or gravity walls with a natural stone appearance on either side of your standalone barbeque achieves the effect of a grill island without the cost of creating a built-in grill with a natural gas line or lots of tile or paving stone.
A grill island provides extra space for food preparation and somewhere to place your drink and tray of steaks and veggies. The next step up is a custom outdoor kitchen that includes an island with a built-in grill, a bar with storage as well as a comfortable seating area, and perhaps a privacy wall.
An island with a fridge and ice chest or bar caddy makes outdoor entertaining a breeze, says Bell. Installing a natural gas line is more costly up front but saves you the expense and time of refilling propane canisters. "You can literally go outside on, say, a Saturday morning with a tray filled with all the ingredients you need for what you are planning to cook later that day and slide it into your outdoor fridge along with pre-batch cocktails and other drinks so that everything is within your reach when you need it."
You can even wash the dishes outside if your built-in grill includes a sink. If you are someone who likes to entertain outside but rarely has a chance to sit down because you are too busy running back and forth carrying food and dishes from indoors to the outdoors, a full outdoor kitchen is a game changer. Everything is outside and stays outside, says Bell, including children and their friends in wet bathing suits who can readily obtain homemade ice pops from your ice chest.
A covered grilling station and seating area offers protection from the elements. A cabana is a covered open-air structure that is gaining in popularity, says Bell. This type of structure is more expensive than a pergola because the roof is more expansive and is engineered to hold snow loads. Bell and his experienced team at Gellers which includes Michael Patton and Braedon Guenther, foremen, and Brandon Sutherland, project manager, typically build the wooden frames for cabanas out of cedar, treated lumber, or Douglas fir.
"With the increase in the price of lumber, there are a lot of homeowners now who are considering composite decking for the surface and sides of built structures instead of pressure-treated wood," says Bell. Composite decking costs less than treated lumber. There is minimal expansion and contraction compared to pressure-treated wood, says Bell, and in addition, composite decking is much lower maintenance – the colour won’t fade and many of the composite products are practically stain-proof.
Many of Gellers clients are opting for paving stone patios for their outdoor kitchen and dining areas instead of decking materials, says Bell. "On a square footage basis, paving stone patios can cost 60 to 70 per cent less than raised composite decking." Instead of building a massive deck around your outdoor kitchen and dining or lounge areas, convert the space to paving stone, says Bell, and you will be able to have a much larger outdoor living area at a lower investment.
When planning the location of your outdoor conversation area, Bell recommends taking advantage of natural shade provided by trees even if they happen to be your neighbour’s trees. Tying all the spaces in your landscape together so that they are free flowing with ease of movement should be a key element in planning your outdoor project, says Bell. When a low voltage lighting system is incorporated into your built structure or seating areas, the use and enjoyment of your outdoor space will be extended both in early spring and well into fall.
While demand is soaring for outdoor projects – indeed, local demand for landscape services has hit an all-time high -- the impact of supply shortages has been a challenge, says Bell. It should be smooth sailing for projects that have been pre-booked with materials secured over the winter but if you are about to plan a project, says Bell, it may be difficult to get your hands on some of the materials you need in a timely fashion. Some of the supply challenges can be traced directly to the major winter and ice storm that swept through Texas in February. Manufactured products such as plastics and polymers that are used in irrigation and lighting components are produced in Texas. The deep freeze in Texas triggered a global plastics shortage. It’s not just the immense demand by the landscape industry for outdoor lighting and irrigation components that the local landscape industry is seeing. Paving stone manufacturers are running their plants 24 hours a day just to keep up with demand, says Bell.
If your outdoor kitchen project is still on the back burner, plan now and build later, recommends Bell. If budget is a concern, phasing your project helps to spread the costs out over time.
Can’t make it out to the lake or go somewhere on vacation? Make your urban backyard feel like a resort-inspired retreat and make cooking at home the type of experience you want, says Bell.
Bell’s favourite food on the grill is cedar-plank salmon. "It’s so easy to prepare and makes for a great entrée or something simple to enjoy when you are sitting around the pool," says Bell. "But if we’re talking about the iconic Winnipeg food, give me the biggest ring of garlic sausage with a hot grill and even hotter mustard!"
colleenizacharias@gmail.com
