Outdoor kitchen masonry in San Angelo TX - a kitchen built around the grill you chose

Most people who call us have a grill on the patio and no counter beside it, and they're choosing between a freestanding modular kitchen and a built-in one. A modular unit skips most of the masonry, the site prep and the skilled labor, so it's the simpler setup, but if you're staying in the house I'd build it in, because a block kitchen becomes part of the yard instead of furniture sitting on it. The price moves with the size and shape of the kitchen, the brick or stone on the outside, the countertop and how far water, gas and power have to travel to reach it, and the schedule mostly turns on the plumber, the electrician and the countertop shop. You get your own figure at the estimate visit, once I've seen the yard.

We start before any block shows up by asking you to pick your grill and appliances, because the openings get sized to those exact units and the surround has to suit what the grill maker asks for. Then we mark where your water, gas and power come into the yard and talk with whoever runs those lines, so the block goes up with room for them instead of a saw cut later. From there the work goes in order, pouring the reinforced slab, laying the block base course by course, setting the brick or stone on the outside, prepping the top for the countertop and cleaning up. I check each course for level as it goes, because a counter only sits as flat as the block under it.

A kitchen out in the yard still needs a dry, level way to reach it, so we often pair it with walkway construction from the back door. If you want a low wall to close in the cooking area or break the wind, our brick wall installation work can match the kitchen's brick so the two read as one build.

Most outdoor kitchens bring in gas for the grill and power for lights or a refrigerator, and that's where the city comes in. San Angelo's Building Permits & Inspections office requires an issued electrical permit for all electric work and an issued plumbing permit for all gas work, so those lines don't get run until the permits are in hand. When your kitchen needs a city permit, we handle the paperwork with that office and plan our block work around the inspections, so nothing gets closed up before the inspector has seen it. For any other question about what your kitchen needs from the city, that office is the place to ask.

The city's residential code lists a 12-inch frost line here, which sets how deep footings need to go, and we plan the slab with that in mind. Across San Angelo and the cities around it, most kitchens we're asked about sit just off a back patio, where the grill gets long afternoons of sun, so we talk through placement and shade before we pour anything.