Outdoor cooking

[SteveMcDougall]

Having recently bought my first house I have a lot of ideas on what I want to do, which sometimes I need to reign in because I may have watched one too many episodes of Grand Designs.

I am currently trying to plan our front garden for the summer, to include a place where we can cook and relax together. Now I could go and buy a simple BBQ and just use that to enjoy the summer. But I am thinking it would be better to build a brick/block BBQ so that we can have it as a feature.

What would you do?

For reference where I live is very community based, where the front garden is where most people relax and spend most of their time.

I'm planning/ sweet talking DH to build something like this for our front garden. Can be used as a bbq but also a fire pit to sit around.

This is along the lines I was thinking of too, but with young kids I was a little worried about open flames in the garden.

I love these though! Fingers crossed your sweet talking works!!

If you have a big garden, lovely. If terraced or close to neighbours, pretty antisocial. The smell of burnt fat dripped onto coals can ruin a lovely afternoon.

It is a pretty big front garden to be fair, but also that is what people around where I live do anyway. Back gardens in this part of Wales are usually pretty steep and useless - so most things are done out the front, it took a while to get used to it personally but it has helped get to know the neighbours pretty well!