Couple fired up about outdoor living space
Stone-covered pizza oven and standalone fireplace add charm
Alli and Danny Kustoff ’s Elm Creek backyard has been a lifesaver during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. As spring approaches, they’re again looking forward to enjoying what in recent years has become their yard of many purposes: outdoor kitchen, dining room, cozy fireside seating area, all surrounding the in-ground pool they’ve had since they built the house 19 years ago.
And it’s not just the couple and their adult children and grandchildren who take advantage of the handsome, Oklahoma stone-landscaped yard. Alli’s parents live right next door and, over the years, fencing and gates have been installed to created a single compound shared by the two households. This was particularly convenient during the pandemic when Alli would make dinner for her parents almost every night, walking it over to them while she and Danny ate in their yard.
“We sat outside and ate dinner for, like, two years,” said Alli, a homemaker.
While they all could converse, the couple eventually decided they needed to be a little closer, yet still be socially distanced.
They first bought a natural gas fire table with a flat surface they could all eat around. But it wasn’t quite large enough for them to feel truly comfortable, so they hired rock mason David Diaz from San Antoniobased Professional Masonry Pool and Ponds who added a longer and wider concrete top to the table.
“That made a huge difference because now my parents could eat at that end of the table and we’d eat at the other,” Alli said.
With stay-at-home orders, they were spending more time than ever in the backyard, so they began thinking about other improvements that could make. When they were finished, they’d spent about $35,000 installing a high-end, custom-de
“I always wanted it to feel as if we built everything with raw materials we found in the backyard. I don’t like things to match too much; I kind of like everything to be a little uneven.”
Alli Kustoff, homeowner
signed pizza oven and bar as well as a large, standalone fireplace and seating area.
The first project was the oven.
“We have a friend in Arkansas who has a pizza oven and Danny had wanted one for a long, long time,” she said. “So when we received one as a gift, it let us move forward on that.”
They called in San Antonio-based landscape architect John Troy, who’d done the original site plan for the house. He helped them figure out where to place the oven and designed the surroundings to complement the rest of the backyard.
They covered the oven with a skin of stones in shades of beige to match the Oklahoma stone surrounding the pool. Each piece was chiseled to fit and cemented in place so there’s no visible grout between the pieces. This was a conscious decision.
“I always wanted it to feel as if we built everything with raw materials we found in the backyard,” she said. “I don’t like things to match too much; I kind of like everything to be a little uneven.”
The pizza oven area also includes an outdoor TV, a bar top of leathered black granite and seating for as many as five.
The oven’s usefulness became apparent even before it was completely finished when, in February 2021, Snowmageddon hit and the power went off.
“You could still see the insulation on it and it was covered in snow, but we were able to use it to cook with for several days,” she said.
These days, they still use the oven regularly, cooking brisket and other meats, vegetables, even breakfasts. But it’s pizza where the wood-burning Mugnaini brand grill excels. Alli makes the pizza dough and prepares the ingredients while Danny, an attorney, does the baking.
“The floor of the oven can get to 700 to 800 degrees F while the top reaches 1,100 to 1,200 degrees,” he said. “At that temperature, I can cook a pizza in less than two minutes.”
One part of the project they did have to rethink was a setup of vertical tubes designed to store Danny’s cooking utensils, such as the pizza peel, a long-handled tool used to slide pizza and other baked goods into and out of the oven.
“I didn’t love the idea of the tubes,” Alli conceded. “So instead, we found these brackets where we can hang them horizontally. They’re also hidden out of the way, which I also like.”
In a related pandemic project, they built what they call a “pizza” garden, where they grow oregano, basil, parsley, chives and other herbs that go on a pizza and more — everything but the pepperoni.
Next, Alli decided she wanted to surprise Danny with an outdoor fireplace. So she again contacted Troy, who advised against putting it near the pizza oven because there wasn’t enough room. Instead, he suggested building it on the opposite end of the pool.
“John’s idea was that, when you walked from the house into the backyard, you’d see the fireplace directly in front of you,” she said. “It also creates another separate sitting space.”
The large standalone fireplace is covered in the same colored stone as the pizza oven, also without any visible grout between the pieces.
Sitting in front of the fireplace is a large, Flintstone-style table that sits on a 400-pound rock she found in a stone yard.
“I thought the stone had a lot of character,” she said.
The whole thing — stone base and thick table top — is secured to avoid a replay of how, when they finally got it all into the backyard and to its destination in front of the fireplace, the stone rolled onto Danny’s toe.
“Someday it won’t be black-and-blue any more,” he said with a grimace.
Even with COVID fading, the yard continues to be one of their favorite places. The other couples who spent most Tuesdays with them, socializing while socially distanced, continue to come by several times a month. They had people over for a sip-and-see to meet their new grandson, and they entertained family and friends when their daughter got married last year.
“It may not look it, because this is a pretty small backyard, but with the different gathering spaces, we can entertain a lot of people back here,” she said.