DIY grilling projects
Barbecues are very popular with hobby cooks in summer. In order to provide more variety, experienced hobby grillers like to try their hand at homemade. This usually refers to your own grilled food creations, sophisticated side dishes and homemade marinades. If that’s not enough for you, you can let off steam with your hands and make future barbecues a real highlight with a DIY project.
Build a practical storage for barbecue accessories
A storage station made of furniture pallets fits perfectly next to the normal barbecue and has everything you need for a successful barbecue party: drinks, knives for cutting and of course Barbecue tongs – everything can be stored perfectly in them. This makes grilling incredibly relaxed and you have everything at hand without having to search for it first.
How it’s done For the construction project you need two similar block pallets, also called industrial pallets, with a size of about 110×100 cm. In addition, a few boards, for example worn-out fence slats. You screw the pallets together so that the upper sides are upright and form the front and back of the storage station. You can remove the intermediate boards of the pallets as required. This creates smaller or larger compartments in which glasses, bottles, a crate of drinks and the like find a place.
Thanks to the additional boards that are attached to the top of the construction, you have a practical storage and work surface on which you can cut baguettes or arrange salads while the meat is sizzling on the grill. You can also attach some hooks and attach your like grill mitt, tongs and wire brush to them.
Build a Grill
Building a grill makes it even more fun to . Once your DIY grill is complete, you can let your imagination run wild.
Bricked charcoal grill
Experienced grillers often have high demands on their grill devices, which cannot always be met with the ready-made grills – especially with regard to the appearance and size of the storage and grilling area. If you want to get creative and design your charcoal grill according to your ideas, you only have to know which materials you need and what else you have to think about.
The first step is to choose a suitable location for the grill in the garden. It is important that the surface is level and the distance to the kitchen is as short as possible. The next step is to build the foundation for the grill. This can be a poured foundation or a finished floor slab. Then it finally goes to the walls of the grill. The first layer of bricks should be fixed to the foundation with a refractory mortar. Then you build one layer on top of the next until the desired height is reached. Be sure to work extra carefully to make the wall straight. You then make a segment arch from stones placed next to each other and standing upright. Finally, galvanized iron is attached to the masonry with mortar as a support for the grill grate.
Barbecue fireplace as a pizza oven
Are you completely satisfied with your grill? How about a pizza oven to add more pizzazz to everyday grilling? Here, too, everything begins with a stable foundation. Since the furnace will be quite heavy, the foundation should be poured out of concrete. To do this, you first have to dig a shallow pit in the desired floor plan, the whole thing about 30cm deep. To ensure that the concrete does not crack later due to the weather, you should equip it with steel rods.
The base is then bricked with hollow blocks. You fill the inside of the stones with gravel and the inside of the base with more stones and more gravel. On top of that comes a layer of empty glass bottles. They provide insulation and later prevent the heat in the oven from dissipating too quickly. The bottles are also covered with gravel. Then you build the actual pizza oven. The floor is made of refractory bricks. To create the dome shape, pile a precisely measured mound of gravel on the brick floor, twice as wide as it is high and as evenly shaped as possible throughout. The dome is built around this gravel mound, which serves as a placeholder for the later baking room. But before the stones can be attached, first a layer of loam, then a layer of moistened straw and another layer of loam with straw is laid on top of the dome for insulation.
After a week of drying time, you can remove the gravel from the opening. The stove is also plastered – for a nicer look. Optionally, you can apply another, finer layer of plaster and decorate the stove and the base with patterns or attach mosaics. When the clay is completely dry, all you have to do is get started as a pizza maker.
Create a fire pit
A fire pit in the garden is ideal for long cozy evenings by the firelight, but of course it is also a great opportunity for a barbecue. For a self-made fireplace you mainly need polygonal tiles, old clinker bricks, lava mulch and basalt and joint chippings. How to proceed First you cut out the sods on a circular surface. The hole should be about 30 cm deep. After compacting with the hand tamper, fill in a layer of lava mulch at the lower edge of the pit, spread the bricks over it and hit them with a rubber mallet at the height of the outer edge.
The upper edge area is then solidified again. Then there is a layer of basalt chippings about 5 cm thick, which is smoothed out with a mason’s trowel. Then the fireplace is framed with natural stone slabs. Make sure to keep the spaces between the stones as small as possible. To ensure that the panels are firmly in place, you should have them closed with the clinker bricks. Use part of the excavation to fill in the strip between the slabs and the lawn. Then use a hand broom to sweep fine grit into the joints between the natural stone slabs. Fill in the gaps between the bricks with grit and lava mulch. Then put enough lava mulch in the pit to cover the bottom by about 5 cm. Finally, all you have to do is place the swivel grill over the fireplace and the DIY project is complete.
Build a garden counter
A self-made garden counter is not only an extremely practical piece of furniture for the next barbecue party, but also a real eye-catcher in the garden. There are many ways to build a counter yourself. Shape, size and materials can be adapted to personal taste and individual requirements. Suitable materials include beer crates, Ytong bricks (), wood and pallets.
Before starting the construction project, the following questions need to be clarified:
- Where exactly should the counter be located?
- How much space is available for it?
- Should the counter have storage space or not?
- Should the counter be mobile or not?
You should also consider whether the garden counter should have any accessories. For example lighting, hooks, a refrigerator or a grill.
A counter made of pallets
Anyone who wants to build a garden counter with little effort is well advised to use untreated furniture pallets. The implementation is particularly easy because the pallets are already prefabricated elements that can be combined with each other. You need four pallets that are arranged upright in a U-shape and screwed together. A counter board completes the DIY project. The counter gets additional stability as well as work and storage space from a panel inside. This can be a simple wooden panel or an old kitchen worktop.
If the pallets have not already been coated with weather protection anyway, this must still be done to protect the wood from the weather. To ensure that the paint is applied evenly, it is advisable to paint in a so-called crisscross pattern: the brush stroke is first across and then along the direction of the grain. Author profile: Jessica Zimmermann is a trained landscape gardener. In her private life she likes to cook and grill and is always trying out new DIY projects.
