Although the idea of outdoor food prep is as old as human’s home design of the past few hundred years made it an increasingly indoor experience, save for the occasional barbecue. The outdoor kitchen reverses this trend and in the process elevates the often forgotten backyard into a hub of activity. All that said backyard kitchens have attracted their fair share of misunderstanding and myths and in this post we’ll address some of the more common ones.
5 Myths That Have Grown up Around the Outdoor Kitchen
A backyard kitchen is fun, exciting and beautiful. It can help you fall back in love with your house. However, in spite of (or maybe because of) the popularity of outdoor kitchens in Toronto and elsewhere a laundry list of myths have arisen around them; some perhaps understandable. Others, not so much. Here are some of the most commonly heard myths surrounding outdoor kitchens today.
- Myth: An outdoor kitchen is the perfect DIY project – No. It’s not. A properly concepted outdoor kitchen will likely include a gas grill, running water and a tasteful, comprehensive lighting scheme. Unless you’re a certified Gas Safe technician, a plumber or an electrician you shouldn’t be attempting to handle any of those aspects of construction yourself. Especially outdoors, where the proper fitting of gas lines and wiring becomes even more crucial.
- Myth: You don’t need to spend extra on weatherproof appliances – Yes, you do. Trying to cut corners budget-wise by installing indoor appliances outdoors is setting the countdown to failure in motion. You just have to hope that when the wiring in the refrigerator goes (and it will if you have an indoor fridge outdoors) that someone you love doesn’t get electrocuted. Every appliance you install in your new kitchen needs to be built specifically for the outdoors.
- Myth: Outdoor kitchens are only useful on sunny summer days – If that’s your only goal when building it then this might be true. But if you want to use your backyard kitchen most of the year and you’ve hired an experienced professional to design it they’ll make sure to add features like a heated floor, strategically placed wind-breaking walls and a retractable roof that will allow you to entertain in your new space in all but the most extreme weather.
- Myth: Outdoor kitchens are only for the rich – Outdoor kitchens are like anything else; how much you spend is up to you. You can spend $2,000 on a fine gas grille or you can drop $15-20,000 on the fanciest, leading-edge grille technology available. Same with everything else; you can have a slate floor or a marble floor, hot and cold running water or just cold. How much you invest will be entirely up to you. But you don’t have to drop $100,000 to get quality.
- Myth: Your utility bills will go through the roof – Why would they do that? When you and your guests are outdoors there’s no need to have as many things running indoors. When you’re using the outdoor grill you’re not using the indoor stove. When you’re using the outdoor sound system you’re probably not using the indoor sound system. Is it possible that your utility bills may increase a bit if you start entertaining a lot? Sure. But that will be a function of entertaining more, not a function of having an outdoor kitchen.
The al fresco kitchen is many things alright, including the target of myths and tall tales floated by who knows who. Before you give too much weight to stories and myths you may have heard call the backyard experts at Toronto Custom Decks. We’ll show you how to achieve the outdoor kitchen of your dreams at a price you can afford.