Why a built-in outdoor kitchen beats a grill on the patio
By Jeff Showman, Owner, Showman Hardscapes | Licensed Electrician (PA #078247)
Grilling outside can be a wonderful summer experience. Friends, family, and neighbors get together to enjoy company, great food, and the freedom of being outdoors.
Here at Showman Hardscapes, we have decades of experience taking outdoor cooking to the next level for our neighbors in Westmoreland County and the Pittsburgh region.
In fact, if you’re thinking of one home improvement that can transform the summer experience for the whole family, consider an outdoor kitchen. Instead of having the cook is standing by themselves at the grill and the host running back inside for a platter, a knife, the salt, a cold drink —you can bring it all together in a way that improves both your lifestyle and the value of your home. Let’s talk.
A Grill Is Equipment. A Kitchen Is a Room.
Think about the kitchen inside your house. The stove is in there, but the stove is not the kitchen. What makes it a kitchen is everything around the stove: counter space to work on, storage within arm’s reach, a sink, cold storage, light where you need it, and a place for people to sit and keep you company while you cook. A grill on the patio has exactly one of those things. That’s why the cook ends up isolated, and it’s why so many homeowners tell me they grill less than they thought they would.
A built-in outdoor kitchen brings the rest of the room outside with the flame. The grill drops into a masonry or framed surround with counter on both sides. Storage lives underneath. Cold drinks stay within reach. Seating faces the cook. Suddenly the person making dinner is part of the evening instead of running a shuttle service to the refrigerator.
What Actually Turns a Grill Into a Kitchen
When I sit down with a homeowner, we work through five elements. Not every project needs all five, but the more of them you have, the more the space behaves like a room.
- Working counter space. The most valuable thing in an outdoor kitchen isn’t the grill. It’s the two to three feet of counter on either side of it. Granite and natural stone hold up beautifully to Western PA weather.
- Storage that stays outside. Cabinets and drawers built into the base keep the tools, the utensils, and the cover where you use them. If you have to carry it out from the garage every time, you’ll cook outside less often.
- Cold storage. An outdoor refrigerator or a built-in beverage cooler is the feature homeowners tell me they underestimated. It’s also the one that keeps the back door closed and the air conditioning inside.
- Cooking beyond the grill. A side burner for sauces and sides. A griddle. A pizza oven, which has become one of the most requested features we build. Each one adds a reason to be out there.
- A bar or seating counter. A raised counter along the back of the kitchen gives guests somewhere to sit, set a drink down, and talk to the cook. It’s the piece that turns a cooking station into a gathering place.
The Utilities Go In Before the Pavers Do
An outdoor kitchen runs on infrastructure: a gas line to the grill and side burner, water and drainage if there’s a sink, electrical circuits for the refrigerator, the outlets, and the task lighting. Every one of those lines has to live under the patio base or behind the counter framing.
When the kitchen is designed into the project, all of it goes in first. We trench and sleeve the gas line, run the water and drain lines, and set the electrical conduit before a single paver goes down. When the project is done, you see the kitchen and never the lines that feed it.
That’s why adding an outdoor kitchen to an existing patio is so much more difficult. That requires cutting pavers, opening the base, chasing a gas line across a compacted surface, and patching a elements that were never meant to come back apart. It costs more, it takes longer, and the repair is always visible if you know where to look. It’s the same lesson from last month’s article on integrated lighting: designed in beats added later, every time. And if you’re weighing a kitchen against a patio expansion or a fire feature, our March article on planning a complete outdoor living space walks through how to sequence the whole project.
One Crew, One License, No Subcontractors
An outdoor kitchen is where a lot of contractors hand the job off. The mason builds the surround, then waits on a plumber for the gas and water, then waits on an electrician for the circuits and the lighting. Three trades, three schedules, three markups, and nobody who owns the whole result.
That isn’t how we work at Showman Hardscapes. I’m a licensed Pennsylvania electrician (PA #078247), and the appliance circuits, the weatherproof outlets, and the task lighting on your outdoor kitchen are designed and installed by the same crew that builds the counters they run through.
So there’s no marked-up subcontractor labor on your invoice. There’s no gap where the build sits and waits. And there’s nobody drilling through finished stone after the fact to chase a wire that should have been set on day one.
Cover, Light, and Fire: What Keeps the Kitchen Open
A built-in kitchen changes how much you use the space. Three other features help you keep the party going for more hours, starting earlier and staying late.
Overhead cover. A pergola or pavilion over the cooking and dining area gives you shade at six o’clock in July and keeps a light rain from ending dinner. It also gives the kitchen a sense of cover, and like a ceiling, it makes an outdoor space feel like a welcoming room.
Lighting. You can’t cook what you can’t see. Task lighting over the grill and prep counter is the functional half; soft accent light at the bar is the half that makes people want to stay. On most projects we use Kichler outdoor lighting, built for local weather.
Fire. A fire pit or fireplace a short walk from the kitchen extends the evening into the shoulder seasons. That means you can start your outdoor living earlier in spring and extend the fun well into fall. In Western PA, an outdoor kitchen with cover, light, and fire is usable well past the point where an uncovered patio has emptied out.
Does a Built-In Outdoor Kitchen Add Value to Your Property?
It does, and we can tell you how. Earlier this year, I wrote an article going over the idea that a deck is a room you add to your home, and the same idea applies here. A built-in kitchen creates usable square footage that extends directly off your indoor kitchen. From April through October, that’s where the cooking, the eating, and the company end up.
The second is what a buyer sees. The NAR/NARI Remodeling Impact Report on outdoor features consistently ranks outdoor living projects among the improvements homeowners are most satisfied with, and buyers respond to them. Remodeling Magazine’s Cost vs. Value tracking for the Mid-Atlantic region shows that well-built outdoor living improvements recover a meaningful share of their cost at resale, and that the return has held steady year after year.
Walk a buyer onto a patio with a portable grill, and they see a patio. Walk them onto one with a stone counter, a built-in grill, a bar, and lights overhead, and they see a room. That difference shows up in what the house is worth.
Where to Start
How do you get started? By answering a simple question: how do you want to feed people? Some families host every weekend and want a full cooking wall with a grill, a burner, a sink, and a pizza oven. Some want a built-in grill with counter on both sides and a bar for four, and nothing more. Both are excellent kitchens. The right one fits how you actually cook.
So the best first conversation is one where we talk less about appliances and more about your Saturdays: where people end up standing, and what you’d want within arm’s reach when the grill is going and the table is full.
“Jeff listened to our needs and the design of our patio and lighting is just stunning. The design included a built in grill with granite countertop, light pillars and a fire pit with seating wall and firewood box. Jeff and his team were here everyday from start to finish of the project.”
— Annette Holder, Google Review
“We had some ideas, but when we spoke with him his knowledge and ideas brought wonderful life to our project. The stone colors and rough cut cedar were perfectly paired and the lighting scheme really turned the space into one that we get much use and enjoyment from for much of the year.”
— Joseph Certo, Google Review
Ready to Build a Kitchen That Lives Outside?
If you’re planning a patio, deck, or outdoor kitchen in Westmoreland or Allegheny County this year, decide on the kitchen before the base goes in. The utilities are easy now and expensive later. We’ve been designing and building outdoor kitchens across Western Pennsylvania since 1997, and a consultation costs you nothing.
Call: (724) 523-8422
Email: info@showmanhardscapes.com
Request a Consultation: https://www.showmanhardscapes.com/get-a-quote/
