Lakehouse Exterior (con’t) and Outdoor Kitchen

Original House

Our exterior renovation of our lake house was a big job to put it mildly. I covered in my last post: addition/reno of the front of the house. A few years back we had replaced several of the windows. This made a big difference in heating and air conditiong, so we are very excited to see how efficient our “new” house is this summer when it’s 110+ degrees in Texas.

To start, we extended the patio the length of the house. Making and installing the forms ourself using old 2×4’s and stakes then adding metal rebar for stability. Make sure the ground is packed well prior to pouring the concrete, you don’t want it settling after.

Patio Roof – This was a big effort and would not have been possible with just the two of us, so luckily our good friends helped get the support beams in place.

While the patio roof was being constructed, we continued tearing off the old siding and insulation.

Then we replaced the old bedroom windows with french doors and swapped the remaining windows out for new ones.

When we got to the kitchen area, we made sure to add water and drainage for what would become the outdoor kitchen.

Then it was time to add the new insulation and plywood, then insulation boards and siding.

Outdoor Kitchen

The base of the outdoor kitchen was built with 2×4’s, and attached to the patio with large cement bolts.

Then we covered the base with cement boards on the sides and around the openings of the cabinet doors and small refrigerator.

I tiled the sides using slate tiles. These look like tiny individual slate pieces but actually come in 12″ x 6″ inch sections.

To build the concrete countertop, we attached the forms to the cement boards, leaving an opening for the sink and grill.

Instead of using the decorative forms for the grill opening we used boards because we wanted those flat anyway and we used scrap wood to cut costs and save the remaining forms for our next project….