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Very few people just buy or build a home and leave it untouched for the duration of their time in it. Everybody wants to install a pool, build a patio, or convert some space into a man cave.
A more recent addition to the list is outdoor kitchens. Outdoor kitchens have attained great popularity in recent years. Their flexibility, beauty, and even just their ability to break up the monotony of meal preparation have inspired many homeowners to construct one. And because their popularity is creating downward pressure on the cost of inputs, the outdoor kitchen that was once an idea confined to the highest-dollar homes has now found its way to many other homes.
Homeowners who take on such a project find a number of benefits that almost everyone discusses, but several other helpful features can really compound the appeal of an outdoor kitchen investment. These added benefits will save you money, inconvenience, time, and frustration, and they just might be enough to tip the scales in your favor if you’ve been campaigning for an outdoor kitchen. Make your case with these points.
Utility Savings
Kitchens are largely about temperature management. They contain refrigerators and freezers for keeping things cold, and stoves and ovens to make things hot. When the season is in conflict with the appliance being used, your energy bill soars.
This is just common sense. We’ve all brought things out of the oven on a hot summer day and seen our thermostat fight back against the excess heat. We’ve also cringed at the wintertime furnace pushing heat into the refrigerator and vice versa.
Outdoor kitchens circumvent all that because there’s no climate control. When the oven releases some heat, big deal. It dissipates into the atmosphere and your air conditioning doesn’t have to do a thing. You just need to worry about getting the outdoor fridge closed back up quickly and you’re good to go, with your power meter moving calmly.
Extra Kitchen Space
Cooking is a functional activity but it’s also a social one. We often prepare food alone or with just a spouse, but we also cook with our kids or friends. In traditional indoor kitchens, there may not be enough room to gather everyone around the range as we add items to the saucepan or mixing bowl.
The great outdoors can accommodate as many as we want. Without all the confinement of walls and tables, we have lots more room in an outdoor kitchen, so we can have an enjoyable and sociable cooking experience with a lot more people.
It also saves us space in what you might call auxiliary preparation space. Every meal requires a little counter space and maybe the sink for preparing foods, but others take extra space. This might be shucking corn, breaking beans, or cutting up watermelon. Whatever they are, they can be achieved much more easily outdoors with a whole lot less mess.
Gentler Kitchen Use
Speaking of mess, an outdoor kitchen has another added bonus in this area. There’s nothing more exciting than the aroma of a delicious meal wafting from the kitchen, but by dessert, you want your house to smell like a house again. Whether it’s fish, bacon, or countless other strong-smelling ingredients, we often waste a lot of money and time getting rid of the smell with candles, sprays, or open windows.
That makes an outdoor kitchen perfect. The odor is gone as soon as the food is, with no need to do anything to help banish it. And greasy, spattering meals like meat prepared on a griddle will not only leave zero indoor odor but will also not leave that film on cabinets and ceilings that you often find in older homes.
Making a home uniquely yours calls for lots of creative additions. With so many advantages in both the practical and the pleasant, outdoor kitchens are shooting to the top of the list.