An outdoor kitchen is a masonry structure with utilities running through it that happens to have a grill in it. Almost everything that goes wrong with one is a masonry problem or a water problem, and both are settled long before anybody picks a countertop.
Start with what actually gets used, because most outdoor kitchens are built larger than the way they end up being lived in. The things people reach for every single time are a grill, a stretch of counter beside it to set a platter down, somewhere to put a drink, and enough light to cook by once the sun is gone. Those four are the kitchen. Sinks and refrigerators get used less often than anybody expects, they carry the freeze risk below, and they are where the budget goes. We would rather build those four properly than six things adequately.
Water is the one thing that will end an outdoor kitchen here. Any supply line holding water through a hard freeze splits, and a line buried inside a masonry island is not something anybody reaches with a shovel in March. So the sink gets built to be closed down easily — supply that drains, a trap somebody can get at — and we shut it down each fall with the same rig that blows out sprinkler systems. Supply lines clear with air; a trap holds water by design and takes RV antifreeze instead. None of that is a reason to skip the sink. It is the reason the sink still works in year ten.
Then the wind, which is really the siting decision. Grill smoke goes where the wind takes it, and on this side of the valley the wind has a direction. A grill placed without thinking about that puts smoke across the seating every evening, and a patio like that does not get used twice. The same exposure that carries the smoke is what makes a west-facing kitchen unusable on a July evening at this elevation, which is exactly when somebody wanted to be out there. We stand on the ground and work out where the wind comes from and where the sun sets before anything gets laid out.
What goes underneath decides whether it is still square in ten years. An island is a rigid masonry structure sitting on a slab, and if the slab moves the countertop cracks and the doors stop closing. That means excavating to depth, compacting the base in lifts, and getting water away from underneath — the same work that keeps a patio flat, held to a higher standard because what is sitting on this one does not flex.
Surfaces have to survive the same winter. Granite and properly sealed concrete handle freeze and thaw and the UV we get at this elevation. Tile is the one to be careful about: the tile itself is usually fine and the grout is what fails, because water gets into it, freezes, and lifts it out joint by joint over a few seasons. Worth knowing before choosing a surface for how it looks in a photograph.
And the utilities go in first. Gas, water, power and a drain all have to be run before the hardscape is set, and any one of them added afterwards means cutting a finished patio apart. That is the most avoidable expense in this kind of work, and it is decided on the first walk rather than in the middle of the build. Most of this work is completed by our own crews. When a project requires work outside our licensing—such as installing a new electrical circuit—we coordinate with an appropriately licensed professional.