Client Brief
A love of Africa, adventure, and the great outdoors… Rustic, charming and perfectly placed. Outdoor cooking in all weathers and sufficient room for a tented party palace over a deck.
The materials would be preferred second time around or reinvented and recycled. New products didn’t seem to do the trick no matter what… Material journey began
Inspirational decking ideas
Decking selection should be a journey. There are far too many manufacturers shouting pick me… pick me… most of them supplying the same product. There are clean lines in single bold colours. The capped decking, grooved decking, smooth decking, and stylised decking. Some wide and some not so, as well as the very narrow boards. There can even be a consideration for deck laying patterns, random, staggered, symmetry, quirky… curved (please no)
To follow the brief, we needed a new direction for our decking.
How do you recycle scaffold boards?
In search of a deck that would have an aged and distressed character, Karl chose to use reclaimed scaffold boards that were anywhere from 5-15 years old. The boards went through a planer to give them a homogeneous thickness of 32mm before being heavily brushed. The brushing process (Denibbing) brings out the character of the boards while giving them a good clean. The summer growth of the timber is scraped away leaving the winter growth standing proud.
Due to the twofold nature of the client’s request to have the decking protected while weathering quickly, the brushed and cleaned boards were then treated with Sioo:X. This timber modification system is coated onto the boards and reacts with UV from the sun to accelerate the natural weathering process; all the while toughening the timber surface through a curing process.
Decking Preparation
Prior to the excavation, it was essential that a topographical survey was performed to let us understand the terrain and how the decking would sit within it. It was from this survey we could draw the project in 3D. The visuals showed the client that on one corner it would be flush with the surface of the lawn and the other would be elevated and by exactly how much.
Karl uses a Zip Level, an essential kit for measuring elevations to the millimetre.
The area of 8.4 x 8.4 metres had exactly half of the decking out of the ground. With a high point of 230mm, the calculations were quite easy. 70.56 sq m at 230mm depth is 16.22 cubic metres and to remove half of this is 8.11 cubic metres or 13.52 metric tonnes (by hand)
Building a Wild Outdoor Kitchen
The idea of having a Wild Kitchen is that it enables you to enjoy outdoor cooking and dining all year round. The intuitive BBQ table has dual fireboxes providing multiple ways to cook and it’ll conveniently keep you warm too.
Once the Kitchen Tent has been installed, we hope to revisit and get some pictures to update everyone.
Credits and Further Information
Location – Buckinghamshire
Completed – 2022
Outdoor Kitchen – Cashmere Caveman Wild Kitchens
Client – Private
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