Breakfast Bar on a Deck Stylish Ideas
Recently, we got to visit a really cool small house outside of Washington DC. It happened to be there on a sunny day and we got a chance to have breakfast on the front breakfast bar that connects the kitchen on the interior of the house to a balcony at the front near the main entrance door to the house.
The window at the exterior wall of the kitchen works like a type of pass-through. It is a very simple design, yet effective in the way that it works by just essentially opening up a window on the front of the kitchen. From this location, the window can open and allow for the opening to work like a passthrough to connect the interior of the space to the exterior.
The breakfast bar works as well because in a small space where there isn’t much seating available, people can sit on the outside and almost get served food directly from someone else working and cooking in the kitchen. Also, of course whoever is doing the cooking can go and walk around to the outside and eat a meal outdoors and enjoy nature.
In this particular setup the bar top seats two people comfortably, in a larger layout, additional bar stools could be added to comfortably seat more as well. From a design perspective, the overall kitchen aesthetic works blends well because they’ve used a moderate reddish brown wood that matches in several different locations and connects or weaves through the space around the darker color cabinets and interior countertop. The interior countertop looks like a dark slab of medium or dark gray marble with relatively light color veining.
Like many of the butcher block countertops found in typical contemporary kitchens, this particular countertop is actual solid wood. It is joined, but unlike other woods that are made from laminates, pressboard, and or HDF or MDF (high density and medium density fiberboards), this particular countertop doesn’t have any artificial type of wood byproducts held together with binders.
Instead, this countertop is made from two particular six-quarter lumber planks. The fact that it’s two separate planks means that there’s a seam that runs in the middle between the two boards, but the wood countertop is actually real. Unlike the manufactured fake alternatives, this option has a seam, but surfaces made like this will generally hold up better to areas of moisture or outdoor environments.
A closer view of the seam between the boards follows. In outdoor lumber installations like this, it’s sometimes better not to try to do fine tight joinery between individual pieces of boards, when used as an exposed surface. Overtime, with both changes in the temperature, often regarded as thermal fluctuations and with an outdoor installation that has constantly varying exposure to moisture, the boards can move at different rates. In this type of installation, if the boards were to be set tightly, the joint may separate over time. Instead the milled edges here are set next to each other, butted together, but not inteneded to look seamless.
In the next picture below you can see the end grain of this wood. Generally, one of the easiest way to tell the difference between artificial and natural real wood is to look at the end grain and see if the end grain matches the rip cut side of the plank or board. Fake woods often will not match up at the corners.
A closer view of that countertop edge is shown below. You can look closely here and see that the radial rings of the board match up directly with the grain at the exposed top surface.
In this particular installation, they installed a 20 ampere outdoor duplex receptacle. Nowadays, more than ever, it’s useful to have receptacles underneath of countertop surfaces. Within an actual kitchen, there are requirements to have receptacles within limited amounts of spacing. The building code sees this as a safety issue because people generally will run extension cords or take alternative means to provide power where they need it and the code recognizes kitchen countertops as a location of high demand for power receptacles or outlets.
The window that separates between the kitchen and the outdoor bar top is a slider style window but opens as a convenient pass through between the countertop in the kitchen and the bar top outside. Essentially, food can be prepared on internal kitchen Side and past through to the bar top, serving directly from the kitchen to the eating area.
We recommend building and homeowners here in Washington DC use a contractor, like us, who understands and cares about quality, deck and patio longevity, snd simply doing things right. Always, feel free to reach out to us here at Dupont Decks and Patios, you can give us a can or just drop us a line. We are happy to help with almost all steps of the deck and patio building and design process. Let us know about your ideas and talk to us if you have questions about possibilities. You can call us at (202) 774-9128. You can find us online at https://dupontdeckspatiosdc.com and you can email us there as well at https://dupontdeckspatiosdc.com
