Residential: An All-weather Outdoor Space to Host the Ultimate Cookout

Building a new home in a new community or simply adding an outdoor home addition is an amazing adventure. As one family designed its new dream home in Leland, NC, they knew to maximize their outdoor living space, a shade cover for their new outdoor kitchen would be a must. Seamlessly fitting a custom pergola design into the home’s exterior, our expert dealer in the area, Backyard Specialist, created the perfect full-time shade covering with an Azenco R-Shade that was ideal for the sun-soaked porch housing this covered outdoor kitchen.

Product Choice

Product	Pergola
Model	R-SHADE
Type	Insulated roof
Size	42 x 136
Options	Fan Beam, LED Strip Lighting
Color	White
Benefits	All-weather protection

Project overview

Leland, NC sits just inland of popular beach destinations in Wilmington, NC. Interwoven by canals and coastal inlets, the area is home to amazing golf courses, kept lush year-round by the unique local climate. Leland sees well above national average rain falls each year, while also enjoying an average of 211 days of sun-soaked fun per annum. These unique weather characteristics also challenge homeowners looking to enjoy their outdoor living space year-round. As these homeowners designed their new dream home, they realized the planned outdoor kitchen would need to be protected from the elements. They contacted the local Azenco dealer and expert pergola designers at Backyard Specialist to craft a full-shade pergola that would seamlessly fit into their home’s planned architecture and make their new outdoor kitchen into an at-home luxury destination.

Design challenge

For this outdoor space project, the local weather posed the biggest challenge for the design professionals at Backyard Specialist. The homeowners envisioned an outdoor cooking space complete with a running-water sink, a kamado grill, and a gas grill, all set into a back bar. A front bar would house refrigeration for the built-in beer taps and pub seating for four to allow guests to enjoy the culinary displays. Situated directly outside a sliding door to the interior kitchen space, it was important for the pergola to create a waterproof barrier that made the space accessible even during the regular rain showers.

With the rest of the back porch bathed in direct sun, the homeowners also wanted to create full-time shade for the outdoor kitchen space of this outdoor home addition. So, the design team opted to create an Azenco R-Shade fixed-roof pergola design for the space. The R-Shade’s insulated sandwich-panel roof design ensured the constant sun would be reflected away from the kitchen, while still providing sufficient airflow to ventilate the heat and smoke from the grills. To ensure the homeowners could transition from indoor to outdoor kitchen spaces without getting wet, the designers overlapped the frame of the pergola with the home’s eaves. With the pergola frame securely mounted to the building, its two support columns were perfectly positioned along the perimeter of the elevated porch. This ensured the R-Shade’s internal gutter system could collect both the rain falling on the pergola, and that running off the roofline, and easily deposit it in the abutting garden area.

Customization For An Outdoor Kitchen

As an additional prerequisite for the design team, the homeowners wanted to create an outdoor kitchen that would not necessitate a ventilation hood over the grills as would be needed if the roof structure were fabricated from wood. This made the all-aluminum R-Shade the ideal solution. The design team went a step further, integrating a ceiling fan beam into the R-Blade. With the addition of a pergola fan, the homeowners could increase the cooling airflow on hot and humid days, or ramp up the fan when grilling for friends and family. To ensure the outdoor space was well lit for evening entertaining, integrated LED strip lights were incorporated into the pergola roof as well.

Color Selection

Fitting the charming Southern style of the area, the home was clad in all-white craftsman-style exterior paneling. To ensure the new R-Shade seamlessly fit within the overall look of the home, the designers color matched the white pergola with weather-protective powder coating to match the home. The horizontal lines of the pergola roof even provided a perfect visual accent to the vertical pattern of the home’s paneling. To ensure the roofline was uninterrupted throughout the backyard, the designers elevated the pergola frame to 126.7″, allowing it to become one with the home’s roofline.