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Many times we’ve been asked, “Where did you find this?” The answer is often, as it almost always
is today, “on the Internet!”
So, in no particular order, here are some of the key
suppliers and items we used with some comments on why we
chose what we did. We'll also update this page as we
get more experience with using the kitchen to let you know
how well our choices worked out.
Designer and Contractor
Ulisses Banuelos of
Definitely didn’t find Ulisses
on the internet, but he’s the key that makes this whole thing come
together. He’s done several other
smaller projects for us prior to this one, and we didn’t look anywhere else
when it came time for the “big one”.
The complexity and our (sometimes outrageous) requirements on this
project never fazed him; he just took it all in stride and made it happen. If you live in the San Francisco Bay
Area, he’s definitely worth finding.
Great design sense, goes the extra mile,
quality work, and a man of great integrity.
My only critique is that he is the world’s greatest optimist on
scheduling
J. No website (I’m pushing him to build one)
but you can reach him at 925-777-0396 or
goldenpalm@sbcglobal.net
Cooking
equipment:
Wood Fired Oven
 Freshly made, amazing pizza in two
minutes!! That, along with a lot of
other capability, is what you get with a well fired, well designed wood
fired oven. Specifically, we chose
the Mugnaini Medio 100 oven; it has the
combination of capacity, heat retention, and pre-heat speed that suited us. Andrea Mugnaini imports the
Valoriani ovens from
Italy. While there are several people importing
(or building from scratch) wood fired oven cores, Mugnaini consistently
gets great reviews (including from us) for both quality of product and customer
service. We were introduced to them
by a friend in
San Jose that
has one. For us, it helped that they
are close by, but that is simply because it made it easier to visit their
showroom. They sell all over the
US. If you do a wood fired oven, make sure
you do at least a half day class on fire building/management and basic
cooking techniques. It will save you
countless hours of frustration trying to learn on your own or from written
material.
BBQ Pit/Smoker
To most people outside of the South, BBQ
equals Grilling. “Real” BBQ,
however, is very different. It is
food cooked low (about 225 degrees F) and slow (we’re talking hours to
almost a day in some cases here) using indirect heat from a burning wood
fire. There are a handful of people
that build exceptional BBQ pits to do that, and Ben Lang is one of them. Rather than a full custom pit, which can
be very expensive (not that Ben’s are cheap by any means!!), his are what I
would call “customizable”. He can
move the firebox door to where you want it, adjust the height, change vent
configurations, etc., very easily. I
wanted one large enough to do a full size pig so we chose a Kitchen 84
without the warming cabinet. Since
we were surrounding the pit with a wall and narrow counter on three sides
for a built-in look, Ben put the firebox door on the back for us. His is a somewhat unique design that
allows the heat and smoke to travel completely under the food before coming
up over it and on to the chimney. This
gives very even heat and great smoke exposure throughout the cooking
chamber. Again, his customer service
gets rave reviews (again, including from us). He unfortunately is not close, but we
couldn’t find a good pit maker that is.
Combine a Ben Lang pit with our California Almond wood for fuel, and
you have a combination that produces some almost unbelievable food.
Gas Grill
Our kids can’t believe I actually bought a
gas grill. I’ve been a charcoal
griller all my life. Until now. With the smoker and the wood fired oven
(which has charcoal grilling capability), we thought the convenience of a
gas grill would be worthwhile. I was
pleasantly surprised at how much better they’ve gotten, especially when you
get to the high end, built-in, stainless steel grills with infrared
rotisserie burners and dedicated smoke burners and drawers. After a lot of research and review
reading, we chose the 38” Grand Turbo from Barbecues Galore. The capability and quality of
construction of the grill, the price point, several conversations with
Barbecues Galore’s customer service manager
Carlos Peros, and the quality of the staff at the
Dublin store won us over.
Side Burners
DCS builds very solid (and
expensive) grills and other outdoor appliances. Their new side burners feature a sealed
burner and 17,000 BTUs per burner.
We are using an older model that we got (for about half price) from
a dealer that was closing it out. It’s
15,000 BTUs per burner and has an older style burner, but for the price, I
couldn’t pass it up. We went with
the DCS rather than the Barbecues Galore burners that matched the grill
because of the 10,000 BTU rating on the Grand Turbo side burners. For an outdoor side burner, I just don’t
believe 10,000 BTUs per burner is enough.
The Grand Turbo grill has plenty of heat, so it surprised me a
little that their side burners weren’t equally robust.
Tiki
Torches
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When we were in
Hawaii
last January, we were in the early planning stages for the project. As we were sitting on our lanai looking
out on
Waikiki one evening, the torch lighters came
running by, lighting all the tiki torches along the beach. We immediately knew what we wanted for
ambient lighting for the project.
These are the only torches we could find that are AGA certified and
have a wind screen (the wind thing on the hill again) and will handle at
least 45 MPH winds without blowing out.
We don’t get anywhere near that, so should be fine. The bare copper cone will also go to a
nice verdigris finish to match other elements well. While we didn’t buy torches from
http://www.flameengineering.com/Patio_Lights.html
, they were so extraordinarily honest, knowledgeable, and open with us
about outdoor torches that I wish I could have. Because of the wind situation he wouldn’t
sell me their torches and sent me to Beachside Lighting. When someone passes up an over thousand
dollar sale and sends you to another vendor because they don’t think you’ll
be happy with their product in your situation, that’s integrity!
Tankless Hot Water Heater
http://www.takagi.com/web2003/c03.htm
We originally weren’t going to put hot water out in the project because we
couldn’t reasonably connect to the house hot water system. This little product certainly solved that
problem (and more economically than I thought it would be). It hangs well out of the way on the back
wall to the right of the oven, and produces plenty of hot water for a
single sink.
Lighting
Walkway lights
These are an unfinished brass light
that goes about 12” above the ground in the walls of the islands and the
seating wall. Again, they’ll “corrode”
to a nice verdigris finish, but the best part we like was that they have a
pretty good spread of light without it being too bright in any one place
and without you seeing the source of the light (unless you put your head
down on the ground and look up into the opening
J).
Down Lights
 Again from FX
Luminaire,
these are an unfinished copper light that will hang up between the beams of
the arbor shining down on the counter tops and the smoker. The bulb itself though is unseen (again,
unless you stretch way over the counter and look directly up into the
fixture
J).
Wall Lights
From Unique Lighting, we’re using
two of the Orion 6 lights (unfinished copper) on the front of the oven to
wash light over the stone on the front.
The 6 model puts light both up and down from the fixture to create a
nice pattern on the stone.
BBQ Lights
We used two of these specialty gooseneck
lights from Focus Industries--one at the back of the counter, between the
grill and the burners, and one just to the right of the door on the counter
in front of the BBQ Pit. We couldn’t
get them unfinished, but they come in a nice verdigris finish that will
blend well with the other fixtures as they age. They come with a switch built-in to the
base, so can be wired in with the rest of the lights, but left off unless
needed.
Specialty Hardware
Drawer Slides
 Accuride makes a full extension drawer slide that is
designed for "harsh environments. Basically it's their
standard, 100 lb rated, full extension slide with much
heavier zinc coating on the slides and stainless steel for
the ball bearings. They're available from any Accuride
distributor or dealer in a variety of lengths (we're using
the 24") or from Rockler.
http://www.rockler.com/findit.cfm?page=10925 KV
also makes a full stainless steel drawer slide, but I
thought those to be overkill (and a budget buster!) for this
project.
Stainless Steel Bolts, Lag Screws, Nails, and Washers
While Home Depot, other Big Box stores, and some hardware
stores carry stainless steel hardware, usually they have a
very limited supply at a hefty premium and only in smaller
sizes. McFeely's carries a large selection (at least
up to 1/2 x 7" bolts and 1/2 by 6" lag screws, and, while
stainless steel hardware is never cheap, they are pretty
reasonable on their pricing.. We used the 1/2 by 7
bolts with a "structural" (extra thick) washer for mounting
the posts to the anchors and 5/16 by 4 lag screws with
regular washers to attach the beams to the posts.
Cross pieces were toenailed into the beams using 3" (10d)
full round head stainless steel ring shank nails in a Porter
Cable FR350 nailer. I thought about bolting the beams
to the posts, but decided 4 inch lag screws were enough.
If they start to work loose, I'll come back and bolt them
later. If McFeelys doesn't have the sizes you need in
stainless steel hardware,
West Marine is
another source, but at a hefty premium on the price.
Stone Veneer
http://www.eldoradostone.com/flashsite/
We used the Country Rubble stone in the English color set
(now discontinued but very similar to Bella). We chose
this as it matches the stone on the house, but would have
chosen Eldorado even if the house had no stone. Their
"stucco stone" so real it's amazing. With the corner
pieces they provide and the virtually random sizes and
shapes, it is truly remarkable. Boni laid up the stone
for the oven in just under a day. Very fast to do.
Refrigeration
Refrigerator
 We
must have looked at two dozen different refrigerator
possibilities before deciding on this Sanyo from Amazon.
My main concern is that it's a back side coil rather than a
front vent. I think we have plenty of ventilation and
room in the island into which it's going that it will be
fine, but we'll see. At the price we paid ($189
delivered) we decided it was worth trying (and if it didn't
work, I could always use it in my shop). Important
feature though is that it's all refrigerator without that
silly, useless, little ice tray they call a freezer that
come in most small refrigerators. This one is only 21
1/2 inches wide, but we sized the opening to 24 1/2 inches
so we could fit a "standard" front vent, builtin
refrigerator if we need to. I'll just put trim boards over
the excess opening for now. We clearly didn't decide
on an "outdoor" refrigerator. Most of them we looked
at were around $1,700 and up. Figured we could replace
the Sanyo every year if we needed to and still be money
ahead. :-)
Freezer
Got this little chest freezer from Costco. In the
store it was only $179. We're putting it in the shed,
and it will primarily be used for ice storage. We
looked at putting in an icemaker, but they're ridiculously
expensive and put out a pitiful amount of ice. Figured
we could buy a lot of ice though for the price, and,
although we don't use much frozen food, this gives us
additional storage for other things.
Sound System
Speakers
We've been a big fan of Cambridge Soundworks speakers for
many years. We have a setup of their higher end
components for our home theater, and Del currently also has
their MicroWorks setup on his computer as well as an older
stereo with sub-woofer setup in the guest room as well as an
I-Trigue setup on a small TV as well as.... But you
get the picture. For this project, as you can see on
the pics page, we're using four of these on on the fence
posts facing back to the house. Directs the sound back
to the area where people are (and thus not broadcasting to
all of west Dublin as much) and gives us some "bounce" off
the walls of the house. The challenge with outdoor
sound is filling the area where you want sound without it
bleeding all over the neighbors (as well as adequate bass,
but that's the next topic). Hopefully this setup will
help that. We'll be running full stereo sound to each
of the four speakers. Not what you'd want in an indoor
audiophile setup for replicating the positioning of the
source, but works well for this setup, as the listening
point becomes very non-critical.
Sub-woofer
While I'm a Cambridge guy, Klipsch also builds some great
speakers. When Costco had the Klipsch Synergy KSW-10
for $199, that was too good a deal to pass up. I don't
see it on the website anymore nor in the stores, but that's
not at all unusual for Costco--gotta keep that "treasure
hunt" mentality going with us. :-) We're going to try
placing this in the shed. This will let the shed then
become the "sounding board" for the sub. If it works,
it'll work really well. With the power this thing has,
though, we may get rattling from some of the items stored in
the shed. It's a downward firing sub and will be
sitting on a cement slab, so may be just right. We'll
see.
Receiver
Got the JVC RXF10S 6.1 receiver from Amazon (although I see
that they're now showing it out of stock). We're
realizing more and more how fortuitous it is that we built
the shed where and how we did. We can put things like
this in the shed and they're well protected from the
weather. I'm a JVC fan because we've always had solid
performance from their equipment, and it's reasonably
priced. We chose this model in particular for two
reasons: 1) it has an all channel stereo mode (see
"Speakers" above) and 2) it was on sale for $199 with free
shipping. Not bad for a full 100 watts per channel and
the other features. Both the receiver and the IPod
will be controlled through RF remoted control extenders
described below.
Sound Source
Yep, we're using Diane's IPod Mini to feed the JVC.
Remote Control Extenders
We're using the Griffin AirClick
RF Remote Control on the IPod.
We're using this RF Remote Control extender from Amazon for
the JVC Receiver. Looks pretty slick, so hope it
works. On the transmitter side, it replaces one of the
batteries in the JVC remote control so there's no external
add-on to the remote. I like that.
Have never used either one of these products, so we'll see
how they do with the IPod and Receiver in the shed and the
remotes out and around in the yard.
Accessories
We put a BBQ Guru on Big Bubba to make fire management
easier. Basically, what it does is control the
temperature of the pit by controlling the amount of air
going to the fire. There's a temperature probe that
goes inside the cooking chamber and another one that can go
inside the meat that's cooking. Those along with a fan
whose output goes into the firebox are all connected to a
controller where I set either the temperature that I
want the cooking chamber to be or a combination of what I
want the finished internal temperature of the meat to be and
the temperature in the cooking chamber. The Guru will
then, assuming there's fuel to burn in the firebox, control
the air that goes to the fire to maintain the temperature in
the cooking chamber. If you add the meat probe, once
the internal temperature of the meat starts to reach your
finished temperature, the Guru will lower the temp in the
cooking chamber to hold the meat at that temperature.
Amazing. Talk about putting technology to an old art.
Computer controlled wood fired cooking. I love it!
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