10 Ideas to Make Your Outdoor Kitchen Sizzle

It's the little things that can make a difference, and we're not talking briquettes

 

By Laura Gaskill - Houzz Contributor 

 

Looking to spice up your grilling area this summer? Try adding one (or more) of these fun features, from grill-side seating to a vintage fridge. As long as the weather is fine, you may find yourself cooking outside more than in!

Paradise Restored Landscaping & Exterior Design

Pull up to the kitchen bar. Keep guests entertained with bar seats pulled up to the grill, where they can taste hot-off-the-fire nibbles. On its own, this is a great small-space solution; in a more expansive yard, supplement the grill-side seats with a larger dining table.
See how to make your outdoor kitchen party-friendly

Linova Photography

 

Get the cooking area under cover. A roof over the outdoor cooking area makes it easier for the grill master to keep grilling even when an unexpected rainstorm pops up. The L-shaped counter space with seating and adjacent dining area and fire pit make this a backyard guests will never want to leave.

Browse ideas for installing a covered patio

Key Residential

Add a full-size fridge. If you cook outdoors a lot, a fridge and freezer can be a big help. Keep them stocked with ice, chilled drinks and the food you plan to grill, and that will free up space in your regular fridge. Of course, not just any fridge will do — a retro style in a cheerful color, like the Smeg shown here, will add to the style of your outdoor space.


View outdoor rooms designed for entertaining

Alfonso Designs

Coordinate with color. Grills, decks and outdoor seating tend to be neutral and no-frills, so use a few pops of bold color to wake up your outdoor kitchen. Bright poppy red was used here in artwork, dishes, a chair and a sleek trash can.
Give your patio decor a quick boost with these tips

Terra Firma Design

Pack in useful details. It’s the little things that can make all the difference in your outdoor kitchen experience, so consider what would benefit you the most — better lighting, prep space, music? This Toronto rooftop kitchen includes a mini fridge, dish storage, speakers for an electronic device and night lighting.

See the rest of this rooftop kitchen

J A L A, Jeff Allen Landscape Architecture

Get cooking in the garden. Highlight your love of ultra-local ingredients with an outdoor kitchen located near your veggie garden. A brick surround that matches the low garden wall helps integrate the kitchen into the larger outdoor space.

Get inspired with these beautifully designed vegetable gardens

Harrison's Landscaping

Go modern. Concrete and rich wood are a modern minimalist pairing perfect for an urban environment. This outdoor kitchen is outfitted with a pizza oven — a worthy splurge if you love doing a weekly pizza night at home!


Get the skinny on outdoor pizza ovens

New Eco Landscapes

Double up on grills and storage. If you’re serious about barbecue, it could be worth your while to invest in two grills: one gas (for quick cooking) and one charcoal (for traditional smoky barbecue). A stainless steel gas grill and a “big green egg” perfect for slow cooking are connected by cabinetry in this Red Hook, Brooklyn, backyard. A sink and plenty of counter space make prepping food easy, and hidden storage below means you can keep outdoor cookware and tools close at hand.

Learn more about putting in an outdoor grill

Hursthouse Landscape Architects and Contractors

Put a pergola over the grill. A garden structure like a pergola adds architectural interest to the outdoor kitchen and provides a place to attach sconce lighting. And while you wouldn’t want climbing plants dangling directly over the grill (hello fire hazard!), if your pergola is a safe distance from the heat, you could grow plants over it, giving the area a lush green touch.

Check out ways to improve your outdoor grill setup

Astoria Designs

Bring your indoor style out. The small-scale but well-crafted cabinetry in this outdoor kitchen echoes the interior style. Locating the grill within steps of the kitchen door makes it easy to carry ingredients outside and hot plates of food in, and a built-in bench seat provides a spot for guests to sit and chat while the food is being prepared.

21 Creative Ways With Load-Bearing Columns

Turn that structural necessity into a design asset by adding storage, creating zones and much more

 

By Mariana Pickering - Houzz Contributor

 

The eternal struggle between design and engineering often leaves us with conundrums. It’s easy to glide through the home design process in almost a dreamlike trance, imagining a spacious open floor plan with big, sweeping views that flow from room to room, making the house feel bigger than it is.

Then comes the day when your architect or structural engineer wakes you up with, “Hey! You’re going to need a column to support that roof!” Renovation junkies experience the same jolt of reality when “Let’s just tear that wall down and open this space up” becomes complicated with pesky terminology like “load bearing.”

Indeed, columns are often unavoidable in open floor plans. I’ve been working on a renovation of a space with two such unavoidable columns conspicuously placed right in the center of my open floor plan. So for inspiration, I looked at some of the ways Houzzers have dealt with columns in their homes. Here are some of the great suggestions I’ve stumbled across. 

 

Rikki Snyder

Make a central column tactile. If it’s going to be in the center of activity, then you might as well make it pleasant to touch. Rope was wrapped around this wooden column to accommodate the belief held by certain feline occupants of the home that a large scratching post had been placed in the middle of the room for them. However, the combination of the wood with the rope makes it equally tactile for humans to run their fingers across as they pass by.

 

The Alhadeff Group

Use a column to anchor an island. Consider using your column as a pivot point to which your built-in furniture, like your kitchen island, can gravitate. Notice how the floor remains consistent, but the column, in combination with the similarly sized beams, marks the kitchen space.

 

Claudio Ortiz Design Group, Inc.

Use a row of columns to signal a level change. A row of columns is a perfect place to put one or two steps up to an elevated section of the floor plan. Plus, the row of vertical structures acts as a visual cue to watch your toes.

 

Via Builders Inc

Light it up. Integrate downlighting, uplighting or a lit display box, like the one shown here, to showcase a sculpture or another piece of art.

 

Rick Ryniak Architects

Decorate your columns. Treat the column itself as a work of art and showcase an ornate pattern or carving.

 

Paul Moon Design

Clad a large column in stone. The imposing presence of the masonry column here reminds you of its purpose, while at the same time introducing a tactile material that contrasts with the rest of the soft interior. This could be a good idea for bringing some of the material from the home’s exterior inside.

 

Wentworth, Inc.

Turn it into a media center. Not sure where to place your TV in your big, beautiful open floor plan? Why not turn your structural column into a media center? Even if you don’t place the TV there right away, it could be smart planning to allow for electrical outlets near the column.

 

Urban Abode

Make two columns into a bookcase. Use two columns that are close together to create shelving and lighting for display or storage space. You could even clad them to match other built-in furniture in the room, and no one would even know they’re structural.

 

Visbeen Architects

Make a wine rack. Encase the column and add some cubbies, and you have a perfect spot to store wines. You could do something similar for shoes, CDs or anything else that could fit into cubbies.

 

C & A Builders

Create a spot for a minibar. Forget the wine rack! Use the column as an opportunity to create a minibar or an ice station.

 

CustomMade.com

Let your column tell a story. Consider using a reclaimed structural element as your feature column (after clearing it with your structural engineer, of course).

 

Brunelleschi Construction

Make it a room divider. For a row of columns between two spaces with different functions, consider adding some low storage that can also act as a room divider.

 

Griffin Enright Architects

Here’s another example of storage between columns that are acting as a room divider. The open, floating shelf system here has a very different feel from the previous example but achieves a similar result.

 

Amanda Still, Hill Design + Gallery

Create custom furniture. This bar stretches between two columns to nicely frame the kitchen while providing vertical and horizontal storage space.

 

Context Architects

Use a column to signal private space. This column almost acts more like a screen. The front side is a display case with built-in shelves, but the structure marks the separation between a more public and a more private part of the house.

 

Laura U, Inc.

Display art on your columns. These large white columns are acting as blank canvases for floating typographic artwork. The downlights cast shadows on the columns, making the artwork even more noticeable.

 

Lewis / Schoeplein architects

Use a row of columns to provide rhythm. The eye takes comfort in patterns. Use columns, and even beams, to create a sense of rhythm in an otherwise muted space.

 

Saint Dizier Design

Use the column material to bring nature in. Depending on where in the world you’re located, you may be able to find tree trunks that meet your structural requirements.

 

Glenn Robert Lym Architect

Create seating around the column base. Or even stretch a bench between two columns for an extra spot where people can take shoes off.

 

Elad Gonen

Create contrast between materials. Use the columns like you would a feature wall. Color them or clad them with a contrasting texture to add a splash in a room with minimalist decor.

 

kimberly peck architect

Create contrast between styles. Like with a classical column in a contemporary setting, as shown here.

 

Mullet Cabinet

Get whimsical. Show your playful side, like with these Disney-inspired columns that resemble something from a cartoon.

Instead of trying to make structural columns disappear in your open floor plan, try to celebrate them. Because at the end of the day, the column stands alone!

10 Rules for Your Next Painting Project

Take your next painting journey from ‘argh!’ to ‘ta-da!’ with these designer tricks

 

Jaana Bithell - Houzz Contributor

 

Color has always held a special place in my heart. When I was about 9 years old, my parents came up with the great idea that they would let my brother and me redecorate our bedrooms. For me, a young, creative and somewhat excitable child, this was the equivalent of being let loose in a dream world. Off to the paint store we went to choose our new hues. I remember this moment vividly, because I ran around picking out swatches and making color combinations I thought were fantastic. Had my parents known that they would walk out that day with a can each of Sunflower Yellow, Lime Green and Wedgwood Blue, they may have thought twice about giving us the ultimate creative control. Sorry, Mum and Dad!

A little knowhow can go a long way when painting, whether you’re choosing neutrals, pastels or brights. Follow these rules to help guide you to your next color triumph. 

 

Grieve Gillett Dimitty Andersen Architects

1. Be your own client. Before you start any home modification project — even something seemingly small, like a single feature wall — spend some time researching and getting a sense of what you’re trying to achieve.

When people come to me for design services, I always start by asking a series of questions to get a sense of what my clients are after. Think about what you would say to someone who is looking to understand your painting dreams. For example, what are your favorite colors? (Think clothing.) Is there a feature — an artwork, for instance — you want to help stand out? How do you want to feel in the room?

 

Behruz Studio

2. File images you don’t like. Use Houzz to gather images that inspire you and save them into ideabooks. With your selection of images, write what you like and, equally important, don’t like about each image. Watch for patterns that emerge. For instance, you may find that your favorite color for accessories is your least favorite color for walls, or that the color you were dreaming of for the bedroom is perfect for the kitchen.

 

Young Folk

3. Measure your room. Before you set foot in a hardware store, make sure you have measured the surface area you’re going to paint. Each can of paint will cover only a certain area, so go in prepped and save yourself from buying too much or too little. Most retailers have paint calculators to help you work out the amount.

 

Jaana Bithell

4. Go with your gut. When it comes to love at first sight, especially when talking color, it’s real. I am a firm believer in trusting gut feelings. If you have always loved a certain color, you will probably always love it. Grab the things that jump out at you.

Hardware stores and paint stores, with their vast range of sample paint swatches, are great sources of inspiration. Don’t be shy about taking a bunch of samples home with you — that’s what they are there for.

Maxa Design

 

5. Always test first. I always suggest trying out a test batch before taking the plunge and painting an entire wall. Before slapping paint on the wall, find or buy a thick white card and paint it, not the wall. The white card will give you the best impression of the paint. Having the paint on a card means you can stick the card to your wall and move it around to see how it looks in different places and against different furniture. Stick the card to your wall and leave it for several days.

Take note of how the light affects it at different times of the day — in shade, in full sun, at night under artificial light. Color changes in different lights, and it could make you change your mind about the color you’ve chosen.

By painting the card, it also means that if you decide you don’t like the color, you won’t have done any damage that will need patching!

 

Etica Studio

6. Prep your wall. Your new paint is only as good as the wall you’re painting, so make sure you take all the necessary steps in prepping the wall for it.

Start by removing picture-hanging hardware, pins and nails, and patch the exposed holes. Wait for the filler to dry completely before sanding back the excess. Once you’ve patched and sanded back the holes, wash the walls to remove dirt, scuff marks and grime, along with the excess filler that you’ve used to patch those holes.

 

Rikki Snyder

7. Apply a primer. A primer is absolutely necessary if you are trying to paint a light color, like yellow, over a dark wall. Primers also are necessary for new walls (especially drywall) as the raw surface is absorbent. The primer will provide a barrier between the raw material and the finish, which will save the amount of topcoat paint you need to apply for your final color.

Treat any painting job as you would a fresh surface, and apply a primer before embarking on any painting journey. It will help make your colors richer and save you time and effort in the long run.

 

Dulux Paint

8. Choose the right paint base. There are different paint bases for different applications, and each has a different formula that is specially made for the environment it is intended for.

For example, if you’re painting your kitchen or bathroom, choose a paint base that has antimicrobial particles in the paint itself, which make it more resistant to mold and mildew. If you’re painting an exterior, choose a paint base that is formulated to deal with UV light from the sun, so the colors won’t fade. Ask an expert in the store to help you choose the right base.

Behruz Studio

9. Choose quality over quantity. When it comes to painting tools and materials, spend a little extra on decent masking tape, brushes and rollers. Not only do high-quality tools make the paint last longer, but they will also help the paint adhere to the wall better and will be less likely to leave roller fibers and brush hairs on your walls.

 

Scott Weston Architecture Design PL

10. Seek help if you lack confidence. If you’re not confident in making color decisions by yourself, consider contacting a local designer, decorator or color consultant; don’t wait until it’s too late. It is our job to help you visualize your space, as well as to offer a different perspective and ideas that you might not have thought about.

The same goes for painting. If you’re not into DIY and couldn’t think of anything worse than painting a wall (let alone a room), there are plenty of professionals out there who will be able to do the work for you.

Designed by Karen Akers

Deep Spring Cleaning - 20 Little & Big Things You Might Be Forgetting

By Laura Gaskill - Houzz Contributor

Over, under, inside and behind: Clean these often-neglected areas and your house will look and feel better

With the sun finally peeking out after a long, cold winter, freshening your house with a deep spring cleaning can feel really good. If you’re ready to go beyond the basic vacuum-and-mop weekly clean, pick and choose from these 20 deep-cleaning tasks, and get ready to enjoy your sparkling clean house.

 

In Site Designs

1. Light fixtures and lamps. Ceiling-mounted light fixtures, fans and table lamps can accumulate an amazing amount of dust over time — which can dull the surface and block light. Get your light fixtures gleaming with a soft microfiber cloth or duster.

2. Doors, knobs and handles. It should take only a few minutes to go around the house giving knobs and handles a quick swipe with the cleaning product of your choice, but this little task can really make your space look cleaner. Give the front door some extra love by cleaning it inside and out with warm, soapy water on a well-wrung-out soft sponge, and dry it with a soft cloth.

3. Wall scuffs and dings. Using a damp, soft cloth and a bit of dish soap, or a product (like Magic Eraser), swipe off scuff marks. Fill any dings in the wall and touch up with paint.

 

In Site Designs

4. Tops of window frames. The baseboards are more likely to get cleaned during a cleaning spree, but what about the higher spots? Get out the stepladder and (carefully) get to work wiping away built-up dust and grime from the tops of window frames and upper moldings.

5. Bookshelves. Shelves full of books and decorative objects can become quite dusty. Working shelf by shelf, remove the objects from one section, dust and return them. For bonus points, declutter your book (and decor) collection as you go.

 

Bensonwood

6. Underneath area rugs. Move the furniture aside, roll up the rug and rug pad, and vacuum underneath. It sounds like a lot of work, but when you see what’s under there, you might be inspired to do this more frequently!

7. Picture frames and mirrors. Clean the glass fronts of picture frames and mirrors, and wipe away dust from the frames. Don’t spray picture frames, since liquid can potentially get in and damage the photo or artwork; use a barely dampened glass-cleaning cloth instead.

8. Upholstered furniture. Get out the vacuum attachments and vacuum upholstered furniture, including under and between cushions. Rotate sofa cushions when possible for more even wear.

 

Templer Interiors

9. Oven and range hood. If you are want to avoid nasty oven cleaners, a thick paste of baking soda and water applied and left on overnight can do the trick — wipe it off with hot water the next day. Grease and dust tend to accumulate on the range hood. Stand on a step stool so you can see what you’re doing, and clear away the gunk using warm, soapy water.

10. Small appliances. Spiffing up your microwave, toaster, blender and mixer doesn’t take long at all, but the cumulative effect of gleaming small appliances will make your kitchen really shine.

11. Grout. Light-colored grout looking icky? Remove grout discoloration and stains by scrubbing with oxygenated bleach.

 

Templer Interiors

12. Inside kitchen drawers. Never mind how the crumbs got in there; the important thing is to give your drawers a fresh start now. Remove everything, wipe out the drawers and return the items.

13. Food storage jars. Storing dry goods in sealed storage jars can help them stay fresh longer and prevent bug problems. But that doesn’t mean the stuff in your jars will never go bad. Inspect the contents of your canisters for freshness, check expiration dates and toss old or stale food. In the future remove the last bits of food (for instance, flour) before filling the canister with fresh food, then put the old bit back on top where it will get used up first.

Maison des Ormes

14. Underneath beds and behind furniture. Instead of sticking with the easy-to-reach spots when you vacuum this time, really get in there and hit the hidden, tucked-away places where dust goes to hide. Any allergy sufferers in your household will be grateful for the extra effort!

 

i3 design group

15. Laundry room dust. What is it about the laundry room? The areas on top of and around the washer and dryer tend to be some of the dustiest in the house. Vacuum around the appliances and wipe down the surfaces.

16. Vents and hoses. If you don’t want to get in there and clean out your dryer hose yourself, hire a pro (HVAC pros may offer this service) to do it for you. Whichever method you choose, it is important to get it done, because lint buildup inside your dryer and hose can potentially cause a fire.

 

Marion Alberge Décoration

17. Kids’ toys. Little ones — especially toddlers who are still exploring the world by putting things in their mouths — can benefit from regular cleaning of toys, particularly when colds are going around. Hard plastic toys can get dunked in warm, soapy water (kids usually enjoy helping with this); most soft toys can handle a gentle wash in the machine (but be sure to check labels first). “Loveys” and special stuffed animals should be hand washed and air dried, just to be on the safe side.

Gabriel Holland Interior Design

18. Shower and tub walls. It’s natural to focus more on the tub floor when doing a light cleaning of the bathroom, but the walls can get just as much soap scum buildup. To maximize the cleaning power of whatever product you like to use, leave it on for at least 10 minutes before scrubbing.

19. Bathroom shelves. Shampoo, lotions and soaps can leak onto shelves in the medicine cabinet and beneath the sink. Give your bathroom a fresh start by removing all products, wiping down the shelves and returning only the items you use.

 

A Darling Felicity Photography

20. Tech. Computer screens and flat-screen TVs can get spotty. Pick up a cleaning spray or wipes designed specifically for monitors, and give all of your screens a cleaning. Use a can of compressed air to clean crumbs out of your keyboard.