Fire Pit - Ready For Action

Last year when the landscaping was done, we were planning on using the retaining wall bricks to build a fire pit in the back yard. Between not having a plan and not having the motivation so many times, we decided to have a little get together with some friends and have a fire pit be part of it. My goal was to be done by Friday.

On Monday I called OUPS to get all the lines and pipes marked. In the evening, I measured out where I wanted it and marked it with some paint. Wednesday evening I repainted it after all the marking was done as my original place was about 18" inside the CATV line. I moved it to 24" away from any lines as not to melt them even though I was only digging about 6" down.




Thursday I spent the better part of the afternoon driving around Lima in Laura's Xterra trying to find someone who had a corrugated metal fire pit ring. Well, either they were sold out or they had the wrong size or they were just plain weird (i.e. elk cut outs in the metal). I didn't get home until 6pm and ended up only buying a chisel and some hot dog/sandwich cookers. Oh well. I'll be ready.

After dinner finished at 630pm, I went out and dug the 5' wide hole to get all the grass off the top and make a surface to pour the sand for a level surface. Kaden helped out by moving sod with the snow shovel. We poured 150# of sand down and leveled it.



The first level of bricks went down and made a small ring. After chiseling down the last piece, it was finally taking shape. After putting down a few more bricks for a partial supporting second ring, we started laying the actual retaining wall bricks. We decided to knock the "lip" off each brick. They're made to hold on to the one below by sitting behind it, but that was going to mess up our measuring. After two layers of those we put some river rock in the middle and then a little bit around the outside.



Done! It look about 2 hours and 15 minutes as we were looking for stuff to burn at 845pm. We threw some wood and news paper (Wall Street Journal) in the fire pit and burned it. The newspaper burned quick and the wood didn't burn, so we were done quick.





Can't wait to start using it!