Brick or steel

A brick kitchen or a steel one

We build steel kitchens. So we'll start with what brick does better, and finish with where we lose. If you choose brick after reading this, then brick is what you needed.

The short answer

If you want a single masonry volume that matches the house, you have a good bricklayer, and you plan to change nothing for twenty years — build in brick. If what matters is appliances that fit exactly, a module you can replace, how the structure behaves in an earthquake and a written warranty on the object itself — buy steel. And there is a third answer, the one we build most often: a masonry volume outside, a steel working run inside it.

1 · Where brick is genuinely better

Five things brick does better than we do

A monolithic volume. Masonry reads as one mass and as part of the house — if the house is itself in stone. That's its real strength, and in traditional architecture it works better than steel does.
The material is local and familiar. Any bricklayer in Almaty will take the job, and you aren't waiting for a production slot.
Thermal mass. A brick oven and mangal hold heat: for kazan, for bread and for long slow cooking that's a real advantage, not a matter of taste.
You can build it in stages, yourself. The spend stretches across seasons. A steel kitchen can't work that way — it arrives whole.
The floor price is lower. If you build it yourself and you aren't in a hurry, brick will almost always come out cheaper than our kitchen. That's true, and we aren't going to pretend otherwise.

2 · What brick costs you here

What an Almaty winter and Almaty ground do to it

None of this is an argument against masonry as such. It is what happens to outdoor masonry in a climate with a full freeze cycle, in a seismic city — and it is what most often has to be repaired.

Freeze-thaw is cumulative. Water enters the pores of the brick and the mortar joints, freezes and expands. Every cycle leaves microfractures, and next year more water gets into them. After a few winters you see spalling and flaking face brick, crumbling or missing mortar, and efflorescence. An outdoor kitchen stands in the open and takes that cycle in full, every winter.
The footing decides everything, and the footing is what gets saved on. Masonry needs a reinforced footing below the local frost depth. Without one, or with a shallow one, settling cracks follow the joints. That's the single most common reason a three-year-old brick kitchen looks ten.
Unreinforced masonry is the worst-performing structure type in an earthquake. Almaty sits on buried faults, and in studies of the city's housing stock it is unreinforced masonry that shows the highest fragility — expected damage under the design-basis earthquake is assessed as heavy. A backyard kitchen in brick is unreinforced masonry, usually built with no engineering at all, standing next to the table people sit at.
The decision is irreversible. The appliances are walled in. In seven years the grill is discontinued and its replacement is three centimeters wider — and that's an angle grinder job, not an appliance swap.
It won't be quick either. A turnkey brick kitchen is 8–16 weeks of work on site, subject to weather and to your bricklayer. We're honestly not faster.

3 · What steel gives you

What we stand behind

Factory precision instead of fitting on site. The body is cut and welded to the drawing, and the aperture for an appliance is made to its real dimensions rather than to roughly that. And you choose the appliances: cooktops, ovens, sinks, taps, dishwashers, fridges — your brands, our apertures.

About the seams, straight away. You'll hear that modular kitchens leak at the joints. That's true of kit systems bolted together from ready-made boxes on site. We weld the body rather than assemble it: the seam is welded closed, the edges are flanged, and water runs off the outside instead of into the join. In stainless and in powder-coated steel that's a normal detail, not a weak point.

In an earthquake this is a frame, not masonry. A steel body anchored to the slab behaves as a frame: it can deform, but it doesn't come apart into separate stones.

304 stainless — real Turkish steel, stronger than the cheap Chinese stock many fabricators use. Or powder-coated steel if you want black.
The body isn't timber and is engineered for high-temperature zones — which is why the kitchen can also go in an enclosed room, with commercial ventilation.
Restaurant-grade ventilation in any length built for the project — what masonry solves with a flue, and solves noticeably worse.
It wipes down in a minute. One continuous non-porous surface, no mortar and no masonry joints: grease and soot have nowhere to soak in and nowhere to collect. A brick joint absorbs and darkens over the years, and there is no washing that back out.
The combinations are effectively unlimited. We cut and weld to drawing: the length of the run, the set of modules, stainless or black powder coat, a countertop in steel, granite or thermo-slab, karagach fronts. We've never built the same kitchen twice.
The guarantees are written into the contract: steel 3 years, 2 years unconditional on installation work, 30 days to clear every snag, and 14 days to give it back.

A GrillKing 304 stainless kitchen with restaurant-grade ventilation in a yard outside Almaty

4 · Where steel loses

Honestly: what we don't have

If the house is traditional, steel may be the wrong answer. In a stone house with timber and warm finishes, a masonry volume sits more naturally. The reverse is also true, and far more common: a modern house, glass, flat planes — and a brick block pushed up against it that reads as somebody else's. Look at the architecture of the house, not at the fashion.
Price. Our kitchens run under 12, 12–20 and over 20M ₸. Brick built by your own hands comes out cheaper. If budget is the deciding factor, that's an argument against us.
Fingerprints and scratches. Steel shows them. A brushed finish with directional grain hides them far better than a polished one, but doesn't remove them — more on surfaces here.
We aren't fast — and fast is expensive here. 90 days; express 60, in particular cases 30, but the premium for speed is substantial. We normally build two kitchens a month — the standard rate, which we're working to raise — and we don't promise dates we can't hold.
A tandyr or a traditional brick mangal as such isn't us. If that's specifically what you want, you need a bricklayer, not this company.

How it gets decided in practice

Three situations, three different answers

A stone house, a yard for the long run

Brick — but with a reinforced footing below frost depth and with the seismics actually calculated. Save on the base and you lose the kitchen.

You cook seriously, with real appliances

Steel. Apertures cut to your appliances, a module swapped instead of masonry demolished, and ventilation that genuinely pulls.

An enclosed pavilion or a winter room

Steel. The body isn't timber and is built for high temperatures, and the ventilation is commercial grade.

Most often the right answer is both. A masonry volume outside so the yard reads as one piece, and a steel working run inside it. We fabricate to drawing, so building into someone else's masonry is a normal job for us — several of our projects are exactly that.