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Bathe in the summer in the house, if you can spend time outdoors? Not the best idea. And cooking or spinning is even worse. It is much more pleasant and useful to spend time under a canopy or in a light, ventilated building, which many call a “summer kitchen”. Do-it-yourself summer kitchen is easy to build, especially open options.
Open summer kitchen: views and photos
Open – it is rather an open gazebo or veranda. A very good option for the warm season. Not in all regions, even in summer, you can stay outside for a long time. Then they make closed summer kitchens – this is already a small house that can be built using any technology that seems most attractive to you.
Summer kitchen – annex
Let’s start with open areas. If it is supposed to transfer the main activity to fresh air for the summer, it will be more convenient to attach the summer kitchen to the existing house. In this case, make a veranda. Most often, they open it first. The easiest way is to make a wooden extension. In a very open version, these may simply be pillars supporting the roof.
This option is very good for the southern regions, where most of the year you can stay outside for as long as you like. For more northern regions, or if it is a house of permanent residence, it is usually decided to make the extension more closed. First they make railings, and then they often think about closing the spans with something else: they want to extend the “period of use”. As a result, the open summer kitchen becomes closed.
The most common material for this kind of extensions is wood. It is plastic, forgives many mistakes that can be subsequently corrected without disassembling the structure, therefore it is easy to work even without skills. It is also light, because the foundation for a summer kitchen made of wood can be made lightweight – columnar or pile, you can – with a grillage.
The second most popular material is brick or decorative stone. In the presence of “direct” hands and the observance of technology, amateur developers can work with this material. You should not take on the construction of a house without experience, but you can try to lay down pillars and partitions for a summer kitchen.
But since even a pillar made of brick or stone no longer weighs a hundred kilograms or more, a more solid foundation is required for it. Considering that it will still take the load from the roof, then you will have to make pillars or piles with good bearing capacity.
If you are thinking about putting up brick walls later, it is better to immediately fill in the pile-strip foundation, and deepen the tape below the freezing depth. If this option is not suitable – the freezing depth is large or the soils do not allow, you will either have to make a monolithic slab, or abandon brick walls, making them using a different technology, even if they are of the same tree or using frame-panel technology. A summer kitchen built with your own hands is good because, knowing all the design features to the smallest detail, you can later modernize the building.
Separate building
Someone does not really like the kitchen smells that can enter the house from the extension. Then they erect a small building at some distance from the house. The presence of summer kitchens is an almost obligatory attribute of private houses in the southern regions. Before the era of air conditioners, cooking in the heat of the room was a real torture: the high temperature “overboard”, heated walls, and even the heat from the stove – the conditions are hellish, while the rest of the rooms are also heated. That’s why they made at least small detached houses-arbors, in which they put a gas stove and a cylinder with liquefied gas in the cities, in the villages they put a small stove. Some even cooked on “kirogaz” or primus.
Modern climate technology can negate all these inconveniences, but free-standing summer kitchens are still being built. They are often still used as a guest house – having made them with an attic floor.
The cheapest option is poles that support the roof. They can be wooden, brick or combined – consisting of a stone plinth, and the top of a bar. This is the best option from the point of view of operation: the wood is protected from the effects of most of the precipitation, and at the same time the weight is not very large.
There are a lot of options for freestanding open summer kitchens. They are built according to the same type as the arbors, only, perhaps, they are large. You can see the technology for building an open area from bricks here, the process of building from wood is described here.
Sometimes, they may have areas for barbecues or barbecues. How to make a simple brick barbecue, read here, about a brick barbecue – here.
What to make the floor
The floor in such a kitchen can be plank. It is easier to do, but many are confused that the wood will be located with little or no protection. There are two ways to solve the problem. The first is to use effective protective impregnations – such as oils or wood waxes intended for outdoor use. They do not create a shiny surface, but protect well from moisture and dirt. Using varnishes for summer kitchens is not the best idea. They begin to burst and crack, in order to renew the coating, the old one must be completely removed, while oils and wax require only thorough pre-cleaning, after drying, a fresh layer can be applied.
The second way is to use not wood, but a wood-polymer composite (WPC). These are boards that consist of a mixture of wood fibers and polymers. They look and feel very much like wood. The only difference is that they almost do not change size depending on humidity, however, thermal expansion is present. Such boards are called “decking” or “planken” depending on the profile of the board. There is also a “garden parquet”. This is a coating made of the same material, only assembled into panels, like parquet. They can simply be laid on the ground, without any preparation.
The advantages of WPC include a long period of operation without changing the original properties. It is calculated in tens of years, but varies greatly depending on the manufacturer. Minus – not the most democratic price. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the technology is relatively new, not yet particularly mastered, although there are Russian manufacturers of such products.
A stone or specialized tile is better tolerated by the weather, but the installation of such a floor is not an easy task. If you simply put it on a gravel-sand bedding, locking it up in the fall, the tile may crack or bounce in frost. We have to make an insulated monolithic slab, observing all the technology: with a sand and gravel layer, insulation, reinforcement, pouring concrete. The dimensions of this slab are 50-60 cm larger around the perimeter than the planned building. In general, the costs and work are serious, although it is convenient to operate.
After the time when the concrete gains strength (at least 2 weeks should pass, and this is at an average temperature of + 20 ° C), the coating can be laid. You can use flagstone – a stone sawn into layers, you can – porcelain stoneware, or frost-resistant tiles.
An easier option is to lay out the site with paving slabs. But this is only a summer option. But – without fuss with the foundation.
If a do-it-yourself summer kitchen is being built in the country, this is perhaps the best option. It turns out inexpensive and practical.
Closed summer kitchen
Those who want to have an all-season summer area for gatherings or cooking put up more permanent buildings. Most often, these are buildings using frame technology – quickly and relatively inexpensively, more expensive, but more thorough – from a log or timber.
In the case of frame construction, everything is very simple: racks of timber are placed with a small step (you can even splice the boards), then they are sheathed on both sides with some kind of finishing material. What – at your choice, even clapboard – wooden or plastic, blockhouse, any other material. Inside, to save money, they often sheathe plywood, fiberboard, GVL, OSB, or something similar. If desired, it can be insulated. The frame is sheathed on one side, insulation is laid (usually mineral wool), the sheathing is mounted on the other side. You can insulate not only immediately, but after some time, you just have to remove the skin on one side.
Another frame building is convenient in that it can be given any shape, and the foundation can be relatively light – depending on the soil – pile or tape. Such foundations are also needed for wooden buildings – from logs or timber. All the rules are the same here. It is important to find or order a project, and to assemble it is a matter of technology.
Naturally, you can build from any other materials – from foam blocks – to brick or even rubble. It’s all about the amount that you plan or can spend on this building. The construction of foam concrete, aerated concrete, some building blocks, adobe will also be inexpensive. Cinder block, like adobe, can be made independently, so the choice of material is up to you, and then everything is built according to all the rules. With only one deviation: insulation for the summer kitchen is either not done at all, or it is made minimal. Another point – heating, as a rule, is absent, and this must also be taken into account when choosing materials for construction and decoration.
Photo report of the construction of a summer kitchen with an open veranda
A summer kitchen was built with the opportunity to “sit in the air”. Therefore, the option with an open veranda was chosen. The base of the house is assembled from a bar 200 * 200 mm, internal piers – from 150 * 100 mm. Outwardly, I like the carriage, but it is godlessly expensive, because the beam was hewn to create a similar relief.
The foundation is made columnar. Since the construction is light, the soils are normal, the posts were buried only 60 cm.
The strapping was assembled from a bar 200 * 200 mm. It was pre-soaked with an antiseptic. The corners were connected as usual – they made gashes. The crossbars were mounted on metal U-shaped plates. The beam was not rigidly fastened, since there will still be heaving, so that the building has the opportunity to “walk”.
Racks were made of timber 200 * 200 mm, internal filling of 150 * 100 mm.
The walls were assembled quite quickly and without problems: there were no cuttings, just pieces of timber of the required length were nailed to the posts. The roof is gable, with a slight slope. On the one hand, the extension of the rafter legs is greater – in order to make a canopy from the side of the veranda, which will also cover from oblique rain.
The ceiling lining is made of unedged board, which was then brought to perfection on our own machine.
Summer kitchen design: photo
After the construction of the summer kitchen, another problem arises: it is necessary to arrange it. Arrangement includes not only the choice of a table and chairs, it is also necessary to organize the working area in some way, to store somewhere for the oven, which is often placed here. 
And a few more ideas in video format