Modern Kitchen Design Guide Modern Kitchen Design Ideas, Tips, & Pictures …

by Steve & Cathy Lambert

What's cooking in your garden? Today we are taking advice in designing outdoor kitchens, our garden and landscape design expert and contributor Steve and Cathy Lambert. Steve and for sharing with us great advice Cathy to create beautiful gardens and the outdoor living spaces.

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Many owners see their yards as extensions of their homes, creating separate spaces and rooms for special purposes. Outdoor living has evolved far beyond the picnic tables, folding chairs, barbecue grills and parents backyards to our comfort and pleasure-oriented standard lot. This trend landscaping is all about bringing comfort to the inside to the outside.

Today, consumers have a vast and rapidly growing selection of products for outdoor living one of the most enjoyable aspects of owning a home. Backyard kitchens sometimes become more elaborate than those inside with:

• Major Integrated barbecue (including many rotisseries and side burners)
• Wine Coolers
• Refrigerators
• Pizza ovens
• The food and preparation areas for cocktails.

The most important step in building a mine, functional and durable outdoor cooking is of good quality design. You must consider many factors as you would a new kitchen inside.

Firstly, list all the functionality you want. Be ready to cut the list a step back for the budget and space constraints. We search for the most appropriate place according to the convenience, the site environment and climatic conditions. These factors also influence the selection of products and materials used in the kitchen of your backyard and dining area. Knowledge of safety and durability of these products and materials used outdoors when is the key to saving you replacement costs.

For convenience and efficiency, the best place for your outdoor kitchen is often just outside one of your covered. Here you quick and easy access to food, equipment and crockery. In choosing a site with a focus on efficiency as you use and enjoy your outdoor cooking more often if you are a host of entertainment or have a relaxing time
family meals.

Sometimes a point of view, focal point (like a pool or water film), or just the terrain will dictate much of your investment in outdoor kitchen away from home. In this situation, you benefit from the expertise of a landscape to ensure that the climate and space are issues related to your advantage. For example:

• Is this space must be covered with a tree for shade?
• Trees need to add or remove?
• Is there a good flow of traffic between the kitchen and outside to inside?
• Is this your dining area positioned to take advantage of your best?
• How does the placement of your outdoor room impact of point of view of the interior
  your home?

The terrain of your garden is also an important factor in deciding the layout of your kitchen and entertainment spaces. If you have a hill, it may require the installation of a retaining wall. Your barbecue, a bench, or a home can double as a retaining wall when they are supported on a hill.

It is also important to examine the degree of privacy you want. Your landscaping can create and define the "walls" of your space to help achieve the feeling of a secluded room.

As the trend toward outdoor living is growing, the market is to follow the demand by offering more and more products designed and built to live outdoors. There are many more devices available these days that are UL-rated for outdoor use. The influx of all these devices greatly increases the options for the kitchen, dining and entertainment al fresco.

When you select your external components suggest the frequency of use compared to the additional impact on your energy bill. An ice maker is great to have at a party, but you use very often the opposite? The same could be said for the beer taps and refrigerators. Alternatively, we have added charges traps "many" or built in coolers Islands barbecue. These coolers are out of sight, but very handy for use at large gatherings and larger bonuses - they do not use electricity.

The outdoor stage and better options against the natural surface, such as granite or stone. Natural products will better withstand the wear of the outdoor exhibition. They are generally chosen better in light colors so as not to absorb too much heat. Concrete and stainless steel are also good choices and some tiles may be more durable than stone, especially when used for flooring.

Factors such as heat, sound and light are often overlooked when planning outdoor spaces, but these elements are essential to their overall use and enjoyment. Think about how these systems will be equipped. There are two basic options here, depending on the location: If your kitchen is a backyard near your house, it can be powered by a common wall or nearby. A more remote location would be to install separate electrical and / or gas lines.

If you live where the temperature drops in the evening there are many options to add heat to your outdoor rooms. We installed heaters propane and natural gas, mounted in eaves and trees as well as free standing models. Fireplaces and fire-pits, but not as efficient as a gas heater in the warming of a large area, are a popular choice because they provide both warmth and atmosphere. If you are looking for the best of both warmth and ambiance, a combination of a fireplace or fire pit and heater is the way to go.

Because heat rises naturally and is confined to the outside to help keep heat where you want, use a ceiling fan to the outside. The same fan used to cool your entertainment area during the day, may force the fireplace or heating gas to flow down when set down for the night.

Sound systems will greatly enhance the social aspect of your outdoor space and can be plugged into your home stereo, or wired to act independently. Lastly, good lighting is essential to the success of your home theater and entertainment area. Just like with indoor cooking, there must be sufficient amounts of ambient and task lighting. Often, the ambient temperature (mood) remembers the lighting, but the task no lighting. It may be difficult to complete your kitchen if you can not see cook food.A good task lighting can easily be achieved by placing small, directional headlamps in the eaves of overhead structures or trees.

With so many choices in features, design and products, installing an outdoor kitchen can be almost as overwhelming as remodeling your one covered. On the positive side - you will not have to box your kitchen or worrying about all the dust that is created upon the addition of a kitchen to your garden. Imagine all the extra living space yourself and your family can enjoy when you start to put the comfort of the inside - out.

Steve and Cathy Lambert created distinctly dramatic, personalized gardens since 1989, thanks to their win-Price Garden Lights Landscape & Pool development in Orinda, California. They share with us their advice and expertise in all areas of garden and landscape.

Landscape Designer / Contractor and Master Gardener Steve envisions and creates a romantic, welcoming and functional spaces for outdoor living. Its author-wife Cathy wordsmiths technical advice Steve something easy to learn and fun to read for yourself everyday gardener. Together, they also write the "growth path column Orinda News.

What the menu this evening in your garden?