How We Designed Our Outdoor Kitchen For California Living

As I write this, my “Beach House” Pinterest board has exactly 1,323 images saved in 44 different categories. There is a whole folder of “kitchen hardware.” One is called “vibes ???” that’s exactly what it sounds like. Six years of planning and permitting for our beach house renovation gives you PLENTY of time to make decisions—and then redo those decisions as you get new ideas and your tastes inevitably change.

But in all that extensive research, there was one place where my board came up empty: the outdoor kitchen.

I knew what I saw when I thought about it—a living, earthy place that flowed between the prep area, the grill, and the pizza oven. Where things told a story: teak blown by the salt wind, terracotta tile that looked like it had been there for years, stucco walls that tied everything together. Where inspiration equaled Mallorcan cuisine and a long weekend in Oaxaca.

What did my research keep coming up? The complete opposite of that. Many outdoor kitchens looked like a carbon copy of the last one: stainless steel appliances, polished concrete, and partially finished brick. Most of them were good, but they were styled within inches of their lives (in a way that made you feel like the grill was never turned on).

SO… Adam and I did what we always do when we design a place. We turned to our camera roll to start drawing on the inspiring photos we’ve taken on our travels.

Our Visual References

We scroll through the years of iPhone photos from the trip. There was food being eaten at long wooden tables in dusty courtyards, kitchens tiled in patterns we photographed through restaurant windows, and pizza ovens glowing orange at dusk. We drew buildings on napkins. We put together a reference folder that was half travel diary, half mood board, and gave it to our landscape architect, Michael Fioré, who got it right away.

What’s improved is a space that doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before (which is always the goal).

So What Are We Actually Doing?

The outdoor kitchen will have three main interacting structures: a full counter top work area that houses our grill, a separate station for the pizza oven, and a central teak table that brings the entire space together. That table does a lot of work in this design. It’s a meeting place, an extra prep area, a build-your-own pizza station during parties, and honestly, maybe where everyone will end up sitting with a glass of wine while Adam cooks.

One of my favorite details you can see in the rendering: Clay Imports terracotta brick underfoot, laid in a herringbone pattern that gives the entire space a warm, sun-kissed feel. There’s nothing like terracotta to make a space feel lived in and loved from day one.

The kitchen will also connect directly to the interior kitchen through a large window with sliding glass panes, meaning there will be an outdoor countertop that acts as a pass-through. I keep seeing serving plates being passed through the window, or just posted on the barstool there with a drink while the pizza comes out of the oven. The line between inside and outside will be fine, deliberately blurred.

The Grill We Picked (And Why)

We feature the Zwilling Flammkraft Grill, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s without a doubt the best grill I’ve ever seen. German-engineered technology, infrared technology, individual cooking and heating zones—which is really important when you’re trying to grill everything at once. (Actually we do every single weekend.) The built-in gas grill will be fully integrated into the counter design for a truly custom look. Which, if you’ve been following along, you know that’s exactly the vibe we’re going for.

The Tile That Starts It All

When we were in Mexico a few years ago, I took a picture of this small restaurant kitchen that had terracotta tiles falling on the counter top and backsplash. It was one of those times where I just stopped and took in all the details so I wouldn’t forget them. I referred to that image more times than I can count while editing this space.

So for the backsplash behind the grill, we’re working with our friends at Clay Imports to use their terracotta antique matte 2.5×8 tiles. They have this wonderful warmth and subtle texture that you can see even in rendering—catching the light differently throughout the day, making every wall feel handmade at its best. It’s a feature that I think will give the kitchen its true signature look.

Pizza Oven Status

Okay, THIS is the part I’ve been dreaming about since we first started talking about this house. We ordered a DIY kit from Forno Piombo to build a large, custom wood-fired pizza oven—big enough to cook 3 or 4 pizzas at once. (Read: real pizza parties happen.) We’ll put it on the counter and build a dome with a smooth stucco finish for that Italian farmhouse look. You can already see it in the rendering—that glorious arch, sitting just like it’s in the Italian countryside.

Details That Will Do It All

In the center, we plant a large decorative olive tree. This is something I will look at every morning from the kitchen window. Just an ancient, wrinkled, featureless olive tree in the middle of a Mediterranean garden, with lavender roaming the edges and terracotta pots of herbs and small orange trees scattered everywhere, so I can grab a handful of rosemary or squeeze a lemon straight from the tree while I cook.

If you look at this rendering, the table set under that bed of branches, the bowl of lemons sitting outside, the lavender in full bloom out front—it feels like the space I’ve been trying to find on Pinterest for six years. Turns out it wasn’t available yet, so we’re doing it.

Construction is moving quickly, and we plan to finish in June. Which means we have some big outdoor cooking coming up this summer! More soon.