Yesterday, I talked about the new lights I installed to go with our new deck. Today, I am going to talk about the cooking table I made.

The picture to the right is our old deck. You can see on the top level there is a stainless steel gas grill. This gas grill was unique in that it didn't use tanks. Instead, they had connected it to the natural gas line that runs to the house.

Personally, I don't use gas to grill, I am a charcoal guy 100%. The nice thing about the gas grill though was the side burner. Even in the middle of Winter you could find me out cooking something on the side burner that we didn't wnat smelling up the house.

Bacon, taco meat, pickling brine, you name it, if there was the possibility it would leave a lingering smell in the house, I cooked it outside.

When we had the new deck installed, I had the contractor remove that old gas line. It really looked like the person before had not installed it safely or properly. I figured it was best to choose safety over convenience.

We had the old grill hauled away to be recycled and I started trying to figure out how I was going to still be able to cook outside without the side burner.

I thought about getting an induction cooktop as they are very popular now. The problem with that was I would still have to find a place to plug it in. Suddenly, I remembered my wife and I had an old camp stove that uses small liquid propane cannisters. We have many of the cannisters still and they are fairly cheap to buy at the store.

I headed off to the local hardware store with nothing but a rough plan in my head and half of a Saturday to accomplish something.

I decided to go with Cedar wood because it is supposed to hold up to the elements without being treated. I grabbed three 1"x2"x8's and four 1"x4"x10's.

I also grabbed some screws and headed home. I got out my trusty miter saw and slowly a frame started to take shape.

This is the bottom of the frame. I needed a way to easily attach the pieces that would become the base for the table top.

I used a countersink drill bit so that I could get the screws close to the edges without splitting the wood. Additionally, this allowed the screws to sit flush and give the table a nicer look.

Looking back, I should have bought one more of each of the pieces of wood. I wasn't able to make the legs quite as nice as I had wanted. It is always something I could go back and add in the future though.

The picture above is of the frame flipped back over with the supports for the table top installed.

Now I just had to add the table top and the legs. Once I got moving on the project I was really able to finish it within an hour or two.

Here is a picture of the table fully assembled. As you can see the table top on the left has some spaces between the boards because like I said, I should have bought one more board.

The smaller section on the right came out just the way I wanted it.

I measured as I was building the table to make sure the cooktop would fit perfectly on the left side. I knew I wanted to keep an area on the right side for prep work or to put a trivet on to move hot pots out of the way.

Because I used Cedar wood, the table is very light and extremely easy to move around. I don't think that would have been the case had I purchased treated lumber.

I made the legs 30" high thinking that would be long enough that I wouldn't have to bend over much while I was cooking. Again, looking back I might have made the legs just a little bit longer. An extra six inches in height might have been the way to go.

Bonus!

As a bonus today I am going to show you some pictures of me testing it out and cooking some taco meat.

As I have mentioned before, my wife doesn't care for beef, so we usually use ground turkey or chicken. The one thing we always start with though is a diced onion. We put garlic and onions in pretty much everything we eat.

My wife and I both have mild high blood pressure, so we are both pretty careful about the amount of sodium we take in. Because of that we always make our own seasoning blend instead of buying the packets at the store. Those packets are usually full of sodium and who knows what other chemicals as preservatives etc.

Our spice blend is a simple "eyeballed" mix of cumin, garlic powder, chili powder, and oregano.

I add the spice blend towards the end after the meat has cooked through and the onions have softened up. You can see the end product above.

Thanks for reading! I don't do it all the time, but I am always excited when I can get out in the garage and do some woodwork. My buddy's dad has a custom cabinet shop with all kinds of fancy tools, but I feel like I do pretty decent with what I have!

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