Residential: An All-weather Outdoor Space to Host the Ultimate Cookout
For this outdoor space project, the local weather posed the biggest challenge for the design professionals at Backyard Specialist. The homeowners envisioned an outdoor cooking space complete with a running-water sink, a kamado grill, and a gas grill, all set into a back bar. A front bar would house refrigeration for the built-in beer taps and pub seating for four to allow guests to enjoy the culinary displays. Situated directly outside a sliding door to the interior kitchen space, it was important for the pergola to create a waterproof barrier that made the space accessible even during the regular rain showers.
With the rest of the back porch bathed in direct sun, the homeowners also wanted to create full-time shade for the outdoor kitchen space of this outdoor home addition. So, the design team opted to create an Azenco R-Shade fixed-roof pergola design for the space. The R-Shade’s insulated sandwich-panel roof design ensured the constant sun would be reflected away from the kitchen, while still providing sufficient airflow to ventilate the heat and smoke from the grills. To ensure the homeowners could transition from indoor to outdoor kitchen spaces without getting wet, the designers overlapped the frame of the pergola with the home’s eaves. With the pergola frame securely mounted to the building, its two support columns were perfectly positioned along the perimeter of the elevated porch. This ensured the R-Shade’s internal gutter system could collect both the rain falling on the pergola, and that running off the roofline, and easily deposit it in the abutting garden area.