At Home with David White and Uma Yu

Los Angeles, California

Located in the Woodland Hills neighbourhood of Los Angeles, this beautiful outdoor cooking and entertaining space perched on top of a hill creates the impression of floating while dining.

Photography by Hugo Landa Garcia

When David White and Uma Yu purchased their home, it had a pool surrounded by a concrete deck but lacked functional space for cooking, dining, and entertaining outdoors, in small and large groups. They wanted to redesign the space to create a place where they could “unwind with family, friends and a glass of wine.”

The original plans included a traditional stucco cinder block kitchen with a concrete countertop and limited storage space. David explains that the thoughtful design, easy installation, functionality, and modern look and feel of the Urban Bonfire kitchen were “much more in line with [their] overall vision of the project.”

Space was the biggest challenge when designing this project. Thanks to creative solutions, such as moving the railings to the outside of the deck and narrowing the stairs by a few inches, they were able to optimize the space and fit an 8-person table alongside the kitchen, as well as a swim-up counter section in the shallow end of the pool.

Their Urban Bonfire kitchen is equipped with an Open Shelving cabinet with Ipe wood slats, perfect for displaying and storing plates, glasses, and table linens while entertaining. The two-door Utility Cabinet houses our Heavy Duty Retractable Drawer and Adjustable Height Shelf for easy storage of gardening items and pool maintenance gear. David adds that their “pool’s robot vacuum, which [they] named ‘Pleco’, lives underneath the BBQ.”

The bronze undertones of our Artesan powder coating finish create a welcome contrast with the white terrazzo pavers and Dekton^® Zenith by Cosentino countertops. David noted that Dekton^® was the perfect choice for the warm and dusty Southern California climate, due to its high resistance to stains, scratches, heat, and UV rays.

“We are really happy with our Urban Bonfire kitchen, but what we didn’t expect was to find a company that cared so much about their customers. Throughout the whole process multiple people reached out to us to make sure everything was going smoothly and after to ensure we were happy with the outcome, including some of the most senior people at the company. This level of service and commitment is a rarity today, and was a real joy to be a part of.”

– David White and Uma Yu