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Tag: Outdoor Kitchens

Why Luke Built His Charlotte Backyard Around Fall

Posted on by Jenn Fuller

Every fall, Luke loads up his wife Carolyn and their four kids and makes the drive out to Grandad’s Apples in Hendersonville, about two and a half hours from Charlotte, tucked into the mountains near Asheville. It’s a haul, and every year they debate whether it’s worth carving out the whole day for it. Every year, the whole family agrees that it is.

There’s u-pick apples, a pumpkin patch just opening for the season, a corn maze, and kids running through piles of leaves just looking for the pefect spot to launch into. The family comes home with a trunk full of apples, a box of cider donuts that rarely survives the drive, and four kids who are, without fail, asleep before they hit the driveway.

But while going to the apple orchard is a special treat, it’s where the family ends up most Saturdays in the fall that is one of Luke’s favorite places.

Coming Home to the Screened Porch

Once everyone’s home, Luke’s routine is almost always the same: pour a glass of cider, and head straight for the screened porch. It’s the room he built specifically for this. No bugs, no need to bundle up, just the cool of a fall evening with the screens doing their job and the kids winding down without anyone needing to be inside.

“It’s not complicated,” Luke says. “I just wanted a place where we could actually sit outside in the fall without fighting mosquitoes or hauling blankets around. It’s simple, but it’s just what we love.”

It sounds simple because it is. But it’s also, not coincidentally, the exact thing a well-built screened porch is supposed to do, and the reason it’s one of the most requested builds we do heading into fall.

An Outdoor Kitchen Built for Charlotte Game Days

The other fixture of Luke’s fall calendar has less to do with apples and more to do with Alabama football. Saturdays that aren’t spent at the orchard usually end with friends and family gathered around the outdoor kitchen on his deck, something on the grill, the game on, and a level of noise that makes it very clear whose team just scored.

“I built the outdoor kitchen because I wanted people to actually be out there with me, not stuck inside while I’m out back flipping burgers alone,” he says. “Cooking’s better when there’s people around. That’s kind of the whole point of an outdoor kitchen.”

Luke at a Fall football game with his dad, both longtime University of Alabama fans.
Luke at a Fall football game with his dad, both longtime University of Alabama fans with a soft spot for the Carolina Panthers too!

Why This Isn’t Just a Business to Luke

Ask Luke why he does what he does, and he doesn’t talk about square footage or composite decking specs, at least not first. He talks about the porch, the orchard trip, Saturdays with the kids underfoot and the grill going.

“Outdoor living isn’t a just a title we put on our website. It’s literally how my family spends time together. That’s the whole reason I do this. I want other families to have their version of that, whatever that looks like for them.”

It’s a simple thing to say and a harder thing to actually build toward, but it’s the standard behind every project we take on as one of the Charlotte deck builders who thinks about a backyard as more than square footage: not just a deck or a porch, but a space that becomes the place a family actually gathers, season after season.

Building Your Own Outdoor Living Space in Charlotte This Fall

If you’ve got your own version of Luke’s Saturday in mind, whether that’s a screened porch for quiet fall evenings, an outdoor kitchen built for game day, or a composite deck that just needs updating before the next round of gatherings, fall is a great time to start that conversation.

And if you’re building new, our September offer applies: book a new deck or screened porch project by September 30th and get a complimentary lighting package at no extra cost, because most of the best moments on a deck happen after the sun goes down anyway. Full terms are on our special offer page.

If you want to see what a fall day at Grandad’s Apples looks like for yourself, grandadsapples.com has the details, apples are usually available through the season, with pumpkins and the corn maze rounding out the visit.

We’d love to help you build your own version of Luke’s Saturday. Book a free estimate or call us at (980) 414-0320.

Charlotte Outdoor Living: Design a Deck Built for Summer Parties

Posted on by Jenn Fuller

After Every Great Backyard Party Comes the Same Thought: “I Wish We Had…”

There’s a specific feeling that hits somewhere around 9pm at a great backyard party. The string lights are on, the grill has been going for hours, everyone’s still outside even though the food is long gone and then you notice it. The thing that would have made the evening perfect. The covered area that would have saved the afternoon when the storm rolled through. The built-in kitchen that would have kept the cook in the conversation instead of off to the side. The lighting that would have made the space feel like something instead of just… dark.

If you hosted this summer, a Fourth of July cookout, a graduation party, a Saturday evening that turned into something more,you probably know exactly what your outdoor space delivered and exactly where it fell short. That gap between what you have and what you imagined is where we spend most of our time.

Custom Outdoor Kitchens: “I Wish We’d Had Somewhere to Actually Cook”

The freestanding grill on a concrete pad is one of the most universal outdoor entertaining experiences in Charlotte neighborhoods from Ballantyne to Dilworth to the lake houses up in Cornelius. And it works, technically. But it puts the cook in a separate world from the party. No counter space means everything gets ferried in and out of the house. No refrigeration means someone’s always running inside. No real prep area means the whole operation is improvised from start to finish.

An integrated outdoor kitchen doesn’t just make cooking easier. It changes the social dynamic entirely.

When the grill is built in at counter height, with prep space on both sides and a refrigerator within arm’s reach, the cook is part of the gathering, facing guests, in the conversation, not turned away from it. We design and build custom outdoor kitchens throughout the Charlotte metro, and we can work with your appliances or source and install everything turnkey. Either way, next summer looks completely different.

Spacious covered patio features a stone outdoor kitchen, long bar, stainless hood, and travertine floor, custom built by Carolina Decks in the Charlotte, NC area.

Covered Porches & Pergolas: “I Wish We’d Had Cover When the Storm Hit”

It’s July in Charlotte. Of course there was a storm. There’s always a storm. And if your outdoor space doesn’t have overhead coverage, that storm ends the party or sends everyone inside to wait it out and never quite come back outside.

A covered porch or pergola structure isn’t just a weather contingency. It’s what turns a deck into an outdoor living space that works regardless of what the afternoon brings. Covered spaces stay cooler in direct sun, which matters enormously in a Carolina July. They protect your furniture and your outdoor kitchen equipment from rain and UV exposure, which extends the life of everything on the deck. And they create the kind of defined, sheltered space that makes a gathering feel intentional rather than improvised.

Add ceiling fans for summer evenings and infrared heaters for fall nights, and you’ve built an outdoor room that earns its keep from April through November, not just on perfect weather days.

room with pool view

Low-Voltage Outdoor Lighting: “I Wish the Mood Had Been Better”

There’s a version of outdoor lighting that most decks have: a single overhead fixture, maybe a string of café lights someone draped over the railing a few summers ago. And then there’s what outdoor lighting actually looks like when it’s designed in from the start.

Low-voltage lighting systems, pathway lights, stair lighting, under-rail LED strips, recessed can lights in a covered ceiling, create layered, atmospheric light that makes a space feel warm and intentional after dark. Not floodlit. Not dim. The kind of lighting that makes your deck at 9pm look like something out of a design magazine and feel like the place everyone wants to stay.

If your summer evenings have been ending earlier than the conversation warrants, lighting is usually a significant part of why.

Under-Deck Drainage Systems: “I Wish the Deck Had Dried Out Faster After the Rain”

Standing water on a deck after a summer storm isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s a design problem. A properly built outdoor living space sheds water efficiently: the right slope diverts runoff away from the house and off the surface, proper board spacing and hidden fastener systems let water move through rather than pool, and under-deck drainage systems like Trex RainEscape keep the space below dry and usable even after a hard rain.

When drainage is designed in from the start, the party resumes faster. The furniture dries out, the surface clears, and the evening continues. That’s not a small thing when you’re hosting in a Charlotte summer.

The Best Time to Fix It Is Right Now

Here’s the honest reality of outdoor living in the Carolinas: the summer you want is the one you planned for last fall. The homeowners across Charlotte, in Waxhaw, Matthews, Lake Norman, and South Park, who had the outdoor space that worked perfectly this July started that conversation six to nine months ago.

Which means right now, at the tail end of summer, is exactly the right time to be having this conversation. Fall is one of our best building seasons in the Charlotte metro: the weather cooperates, the schedule is more open than spring, and a build completed this fall means you’re ready for next May. Not scrambling in June.

If your outdoor space left you thinking “I wish we had…” at any point this summer, that’s the project. We’d love to talk through what it actually looks like and what it actually costs.

Book a free estimate and let’s design something that delivers next summer, every summer.

And for more design ideas and real Charlotte area pricing, check out our Design Gallery or browse our last blog post.