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Showing posts with the label outdoor kitchen

Getting Ready for Barbeque

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W e always have our first barbeque of the season on the weekend that falls around July 1st which happens to be my birthday.  This year, we had this barbeque on July 1st.  If anyone is wondering, I turned 61 years old this year.  Unfortunately, most days, I feel like I'm 81 and I have difficulty and a lot of pain trying to get around and I even look the part due to being hunched over and having difficulty standing.  Contrary to how I feel on these days, my birth certificate claims I am 61 years old this year.   We had a very dry spring to the point where everything in the yard was dying and turning brown but the past two weeks were filled with day after day of solid rain until the day before our scheduled barbeque.  The rain stopped just in time for me to mow the lawn, do some much needed landscaping and set up the backyard for our barbeque.  It was sunny, hot and humid with a bit of smoke from Canadian wildfires hanging in the air.  My health didn't fare so well and I ended up

Pulled Pork on the Grill

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W e had pulled pork for dinner last night and it was pretty good.  I made my own maple cole slaw and some hand-cut fries to go with it.  It was a really nice meal but it was an all day affair making it! One thing is certain... Having an outdoor kitchen under a roof makes something like this far easier and more pleasant to accomplish.   I did something a bit differently this time around.  Usually we take the quick and easy route by slow cooking the pork in the oven for about four hours.  That always turns out well but this time I went with a much slower cook on the grill.  I did it on the grill this time around for two reasons.  First, any meat tastes better on the grill.  And two, if I used the grill, then I could actually smoke the pork for even more flavor.   I applied my homemade dry rub on Friday and let the pork sit in the fridge overnight.  Then I started the grill at around 9:45am with a combination of Cherry wood chips and Apple wood chips (all pre-soaked overnight) in the smok

Cabinet Frame Assembled

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I had a few hours each day over the past two days to make some progress on our outdoor kitchen project.  My health was poor for a few days up until yesterday so work on the outdoor kitchen came to a standstill last week.   After recovering from usual health problems (related to mast cell disease) and a couple of days of my TBI seriously bothering me again...  headaches, tingling and not thinking clearly...  I was able to go over my design of these cabinets.  I sketched some ideas...  did the math for dimensions...  sketched a bit more... did the math again...  and then did the math once more before cutting each piece.  I then began making all the cuts necessary to form all the parts yesterday afternoon.  On the positive side, all my math was correct which resulted in all the parts fitting together perfectly. Here are the six legs for the cabinet base frame.  I inserted leveling feet into the bottom of each leg so I can keep this big "L shaped" base cabinet level... B

Roof Installed

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Yesterday was a busy day.  I spent the entire day, until dark, installing the new roof over the play house and the new outdoor kitchen/grilling area.  It was definitely a productive day, although, it was a bit frustrating and not necessarily a "good" day. I kept dropping things especially after climbing up a ladder.  Then I'd have to climb down, retrieve what I dropped, then climb back up.  Then I'd drop something else and have to go down and up again.  Then, I'd realize I forgot to bring a tool up with me and have to go down and up again.   The valleys were two difficult areas.  It has been a long time since I built a valley and I've never done it in metal roofing material so it was a bit of a challenge.  I couldn't really get into position well enough to get accurate measurements.  I'd end up measuring twice, sometimes three times, to see if I can get consistent results before cutting.  The angles at which I was viewing the tape measure were shal

We Have Germination and More Progress

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We have germination! A week or so ago, I finished installing that stone pathway between the back door to the house and the outdoor grilling kitchen area we are in the process of building. Upon completion of laying the all the stone, I sprinkled down some grass seed so we could grow some nice grass between the stones (as opposed to weeds) like our other stone pathway going to the back door.  When I cut the lawn yesterday, I noticed that the grass seeds had germinated already! Before long, the stone path will look like it has been there forever. We still have plenty of big plans for the back yard but it already looks nothing like it did when I moved here. The landscaping, just like the house, has come a long way in a few relatively short years. The weather was nice this morning... sunny and not too warm... so I decided to make some more headway on the part of the project where I lay the patio blocks for the grilling kitchen area. Area cleared, leveled, tamped and ready

A Big Puzzle

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I made a bit more progress on the outdoor grill and kitchen area which allowed me to let out a small sigh of relief after a few weeks of alternating between poor weather and poor health.  I believe we have enough patio blocks for the small kitchen area that will be under a roof. This area is only about 42 square feet so I didn't really need a whole lot of blocks. They are heavy, however, so we had to buy them in about three batches because we've been transporting them in our small cars. As a result, we encountered a problem when Lowes restocked with a different shade of block than we had originally bought in the first batch. I had to settle for two shades of gray, but it will look fine when it is all put together.  Since we were transporting these patio blocks in our cars, we had to make multiple trips back and forth to Lowes. This was fairly easy to do... whenever we were up in the Burlington area running errands, we just stopped at Lowes also to pick up about 200 lbs of b

It Was A Productive Morning

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New grill placed in the backyard in its temporary home... a new grilling kitchen area is being built off the backside of this log shed... you can see some blocks out marking locations of posts for the roof. It was a busy and productive morning today! First, I added much needed RAM to my desktop computer as well as my laptop computer. Getting that task done is a huge relief especially after the difficulties I had with the laptop computer ( see my previous post ). After accomplishing those tasks with my computers, I headed outdoors to see if I could make some headway in getting our new grill out of our living room. The grill was still sitting in the living room after assembling it a few days ago because I had no place outdoors to set it. The old grill was located in a place where we are building an outdoor kitchen grilling area under cover. If I set the new grill there, then it would be in my way while working on building this outdoor area. I first had to find a level area nearb