Outdoor Kitchen Cabinetry

Built in PVC, not wood

An outdoor kitchen is not an indoor kitchen that happens to be outside. On a Tampa lanai the cabinetry sees afternoon thunderstorms blowing in sideways, overnight humidity near saturation, and surface temperatures that swing forty degrees in a day. Near the water it also sees chloride in the air, which attacks fasteners and hardware long before it touches the box.

That is why most of our outdoor kitchens are built in marine-grade PVC rather than wood or plywood. In Florida heat, humidity and salt air, PVC will not warp, swell, rot or grow mould the way wood and plywood do. It is fully waterproof, UV-stable and rinses clean, so the cabinets last as long as the stone sitting on top of them.

It is the one place where we deliberately do not use the birch plywood that goes into every indoor box we build, because outdoors the substrate that survives is not the one that looks most premium in a showroom. Our guide to what outdoor kitchen materials actually hold up in Florida goes through the trade-offs in detail.

Layout around the appliances you own

Grill cutouts are not standardised across manufacturers, and the clearance requirements on the sides and below vary meaningfully between brands. We build around your specific appliance model numbers rather than a generic opening, which avoids the common outcome of a grill that fits the hole but violates its own clearance spec.

The same applies to under-counter refrigeration, which needs ventilation, and to sink bases, which need a drain path that does not trap water inside the cabinet. Bring the model numbers to the consultation and the layout gets built around them.

Hardware, fasteners and the details that fail first

In outdoor cabinetry the hardware fails before the carcass does. Standard hinges and slides will corrode, and the fastener heads will bleed rust stains down a finished face within a season or two near the coast. Specification here is about the metallurgy, and it is worth the line item, replacing seized hardware on a built-in island is disproportionately expensive relative to getting it right initially.