Frying fish and cooking messy meals indoors always leaves the entire house smelling like grease for days, so constructing a basic brick wet kitchen setup near the back patio felt like a smart move. The plan was a simple concrete countertop, a drop in stainless steel sink, and a dedicated space for a heavy-duty gas burner. Instead, dealing with outdoor plumbing connections and mixing hundreds of pounds of wet cement completely ruined my week.
The real trouble started with trenching the water supply lines out from the main house crawlspace. I spent an entire afternoon hacked over in the dirt, cutting through thick tree roots and laying PVC pipe at a downward slope so the drain wouldn’t freeze and burst during the colder months. My shoulders were completely burning from wrestling with the pipe cutters in such a tight, awkward space, and I managed to glue my own work gloves together twice with the purple PVC primer.
Building the actual support structure out of heavy concrete cinder blocks was an absolute test of patience. If your first row of blocks is even slightly unlevel, the entire countertop will slope, and water will pool all over the cooking surface instead of draining away. I spent hours manually mixing heavy bags of mortar in a plastic tub, slopping it onto the bricks, and tapping them flat with a rubber mallet until my wrists were totally numb. Dropping a heavy block onto my big toe mid afternoon definitely didn’t help my mood.
Pouring the concrete slab for the countertop took the last bit of energy I had. Screeding the wet mix flat while keeping it perfectly smooth requires ridiculous arm strength, and by the time I finished, my jeans were completely caked in grey cement paste. The frame forms are still bolted on while the concrete cures for the next few days, and my backyard looks like a chaotic construction site. I am leaving the tools scattered all over the grass because I honestly don’t have the strength to clean them up until tomorrow.