Fire Pit

After many hours of working, loading, digging, and sweating because of it, we finished our fire pit. I should mention that Justin did most of the digging, and the loading, but hey, I did my share of helping when I could. I helped place the sand, rocks, and all of the bricks to create the fire pit itself, so I was proud of that. I also helped mix the mortar. Woot!

We are extremely proud of this new little addition to our backyard. We've been dreaming of having one of our own for a couple of years now - of course, we were always in a college apartment, so we were never able to use our own land or yard.

It's the little luxuries that are going to really give our house the feeling we want. We didn't have to spend that much money (under $200) for something like this, and it will be the mood-setter for many family nights with our future children and our relatives. Perfect.

I'll try to show you the steps to make one of these in detail later, but basically, you:
1. convince your wife (in our case) that it's a good idea
2. dig a hole
3. show your wife so she feels proud of you, therefore allowing you to proceed
4. make it level and make it round (a lot harder than it sounds)
5. place drainage gravel (bag of rock) into hole at least 6 inches
6. tamp it down
7. place sand on top of gravel - at least 1 inch
8. tamp it down and level
9. place one layer of bricks in a circle, forming the base for your fire pit
10. tamp them down
11. place mortar on top of bricks
12. place next layer of bricks
13. repeat as many times as you need!
14. be proud

Disclaimer: this is not as easy as it seems (even though it was rather easy-ish). You may not get the rocks perfect at first, so you will be readjusting as you go - no biggy. You will take numerous water breaks and you will sweat more than you think. We did, however, choose to complete a large portion of the project on a 90+ degree day, but I would suggest otherwise. Enjoy!