An outdoor kitchen lives in conditions that destroy ordinary furniture: +40 in summer, −30 in winter, rain, irrigation, and the heat of a hearth forty centimeters away. Every material here was chosen by one rule — it has to survive all of that and ten years of cooking. Below: what each one is, why it was chosen, and where it lets you down.
Message us on WhatsAppThis is the difference between an outdoor kitchen and a kitchen unit carried out into the yard. Furniture materials that live happily indoors swell outdoors from rain and irrigation, warp the fronts and can't take the heat beside a hearth. Everything you see and touch in our kitchen is painted steel, 304 stainless, stone and thermally modified timber.
What follows is material by material: what it is, why it was chosen, and where its weak point is. All four have one, and we name them.
304 is the nickel-bearing grade, the same one industrial kitchen equipment is made from. We buy Turkish: it is stronger and lasts longer than the cheap Chinese steel many manufacturers use, American ones included. Every cooking unit is welded in our own shop, by the same welders who build the carcass. All the 304 in a kitchen — carcasses, fronts, ventilation — carries a three-year warranty written into the contract.
Honestly: polished steel shows fingerprints and water spots, and it gets hot in direct sun. Under an open sky we recommend the brushed finish — the directional grain hides marks and dissolves new scratches into itself. And even 304 can corrode if the surface is never washed: salt and food residue aren't forgiven forever.
Around here, granite is the word for any stone countertop. It stuck, it sounds solid, and nobody questions it. Yet of the seven slabs people choose most often, not one is granite: three are quartzite and four are marble. That's our supplier's own classification.
And it isn't a quibble about words. Marble is a carbonate, and acid dissolves it literally: lemon juice, wine or vinegar leave a dull mark within minutes, and the polish in that spot doesn't come back with a cloth. On a splashback that doesn't matter. In the working zone beside a grill it does. We aren't talking you out of marble — we build full-height splashbacks, island faces and tables from it. We would rather you chose it knowing, instead of finding out afterwards.
The trade name is invented by the quarry. The behavior is set by the rock:
| Rock | Hardness | Acid | What it is | Where to put it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Granite | 6–7 on the Mohs scale | Doesn't etch | An igneous rock: melt that cooled at depth. The crystalline grain is visible to the naked eye. | The working zone beside a grill, the sink, anything that gets cut and spilled on. Not in stock at the moment — brought in to order. |
| Quartzite | 7 on the Mohs scale | Essentially doesn't etch | Sandstone recrystallised by pressure into almost pure quartz. Looks like marble, behaves like granite. | When you want the pattern of marble but the kitchen is going to be used. Three of the seven slabs below. |
| Marble | 3–4 on the Mohs scale | Etches within minutes | Limestone recrystallised by heat and pressure. It is a carbonate — acid dissolves it, literally. | Splashbacks, island faces, tables — surfaces you look at rather than cook on. Four of the seven slabs below. |
Marble and quartzite can't be told apart by eye, and on pale slabs the substitution is the commonest one in the stone trade anywhere in the world: quartzite costs more, and marble regularly leaves the yard under its name. We print the supplier classification as given, but what you should rely on isn't a label, it is a check.
It is done on an offcut, never on a finished countertop: a drop of lemon juice or table vinegar on a polished spot, ten minutes, rinse. Marble goes dull; quartzite does nothing. There are always offcuts after cutting — ask for yours and check it yourself, taking neither our word for it nor the yard's.
This isn't a catalog: slabs arrive and leave, and every one is unique. The number beside each name is the yard's slab number, so you can ask for it directly. We confirm what is actually on the floor before you choose.
Quartzite · 0004
Near-black, with a layered grain that runs in waves across the cut. Bookmatched: two adjacent slabs open like a book, so the seam down the middle of an island becomes an axis of symmetry rather than a flaw.
Good for: Islands and working runs where real cooking happens. The toughest stone of the seven.
The caveat: Dark stone shows dust, dried droplets and smears more than light stone does. On an open terrace in Almaty that means wiping it more often, not less.
Quartzite · 0047
A pale stone with a coarse grainy pattern and rust-colored seams — visually the closest thing here to what people around Almaty call granite.
Good for: Kitchens used every day and not babied. The pale tone forgives dust.
The caveat: A grainy pattern argues with bold ornament on a facade or floor. If the yard already has a strong pattern, this stone will fight it.
Quartzite · 0052
The lightest of the set: a white field with sparse gray and charcoal veins on the diagonal. The closest thing to classic Carrara that's actually in stock.
Good for: Light-colored yards and kitchens under a canopy. It sits well against thermo-karagach — warm timber against cold white.
The caveat: Pale stone draws oil: an olive-oil mark surfaces within a day if it isn't wiped straight away. And white “quartzites” are exactly where marble most often gets sold under the wrong name — test it with a drop (how, below).
Marble · 0013
White with gray-brown layers running in a broad diagonal. On a large slab the pattern reads as a landscape rather than a texture.
Good for: A full-height splashback and the face of an island — where the stone is looked at rather than cut on.
The caveat: Marble. Lemon, wine and vinegar leave a dull mark — an etch — within minutes, and the polish is gone in that spot. We don't recommend it for the working zone beside a grill.
Marble · 0058
Black-and-blue folds shot through with green and copper — the pattern of a geological fold, not of blotches. The most dramatic slab of the seven.
Good for: When the island has to be the main object in the yard — as its face and bar top, though, not as the working zone.
The caveat: Marble too, with all the rules about acid. And the slab doesn't repeat: if it runs short of the project, a matching one can't be ordered.
Marble · 0024
A brecciated marble: gray fragments cemented by gold and honey-colored veins — the rock was once shattered and set again. The pattern is irregular, and that's the whole point of it.
Good for: Warm yards with stone and timber in the finishes. The gold in the veins picks up brass and thermo-karagach.
The caveat: Marble, and grown together from fragments on top of that: it is weaker along those joins. Slabs like this more often need mesh backing and care on a long overhang.
Marble · 0022
Half the slab is cold gray and striped, half is ochre and rust, and the border between them runs in a living wave. In effect it is two different stones on one slab.
Good for: Projects where the slab is chosen in person and the cut is drawn around the pattern — a dining table, a bar top, the end of an island.
The caveat: Laying out the cut on a slab like this is half the job. A piece chosen sight-unseen can come out entirely gray or entirely rust, and that won't be the stone you saw in the photograph.
Slab photography and the rock classification are supplied by Stonehead, our stone supplier. Photographs of finished countertops are our own showroom in Almaty.
You buy stone for the pattern and then live with the cut. Three things decide whether a countertop still looks expensive in five years:
Press-vacuum thermal modification is a patented process, and WoodPower in Almaty holds the patent. We're the only holder of it in Kazakhstan, and we don't resell somebody else's board: the cycle runs from log to packaging with us. At 180–215 °C without oxygen the sugars are driven out of the timber, leaving rot and wood-boring insects nothing to feed on. There isn't one chemical in the process — only temperature, pressure and time.
The board comes out at 4–6% equilibrium moisture: it can barely bind water, so it doesn't warp or cup. The color isn't a stain — the timber produced it, and it runs right through, so a scratch doesn't expose pale wood underneath. Stable from −40 to +40 °C. 20+ years of service with the coating renewed, and up to ten years of warranty.
Honestly: the coating has to be refreshed with oil — this isn't fit-and-forget. And while we have the patent and a plant you can walk into, we don't have an independent laboratory's signature under the numbers. The patent is our word; a certificate would be somebody else's. Which is why we invite you to walk a terrace that's four years old.
A slab is a single board 70–110 cm wide that has been through the same 180–215 °C cycle. The figure never repeats: no second table like it exists. You don't choose a slab from a catalog — you choose it at the yard, in daylight.
Honestly: stainless fixings only. Thermal modification raises the natural acidity of the timber, and ordinary hardware corrodes in it. We use stainless — and that's the reason not to buy a cheaper slab table from someone who doesn't know this. The size is limited by the tree, not by our ambition.
Why there is no price here. There is no price list for slabs, and anyone showing you one is selling you something else. No two boards are the same: the price follows the particular slab — its width, its length, its figure, and how much resin filling it needs. We quote on the board you picked, before we cut it.
Powder coating. Applied by a specializt who mostly coats automotive brake discs — parts that live in extreme heat, wear and corrosion. RAL 8017 as standard, or any RAL color you like.
Hinges and hardware from the USA. We bring them in from America so the doors still close as softly in year six as on handover day. On an outdoor kitchen the hardware gives up long before the carcass does.
304 fixings. Bolts, screws and every fastener are specializt stainless. Nothing is saved on the cheap small parts nobody sees — the ones that rust first.
It is easier to touch it once than to read a page. Our own kitchen stands in the showroom on Khodzhanova: Cambridge White quartzite, 304 steel, thermo-karagach — all of it under an open sky for a third year. Beside it is a terrace four years old. You see not how the materials look in a catalog, but what has become of them.
Come to the showroom or message us — we'll tell you which of these your yard actually needs, and which it doesn't.
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