DIY Outdoor Firepit Tutorial, Part 1

Welcome back!!

I have always wanted an outdoor firepit. In the midwest, there is nothing better than sitting outside with a beverage and a roaring fire in the evening. Especially in the fall!

Shortly after we bought our house, a severe windstorm split a century oak in our backyard in half. Right down the middle. Half stayed up, half fell on a neighbor's house. (Sidenote: a tree falling on your neighbor's house does not lead to potlucks and wine tastings)

Anyway, this is what we were left with after the tree was removed:

The DH and "The Stump"

Isn't it pretty? Why, you might ask, would you ever change it? Well, for 1.5 years we didn't, at least not much. Mostly because when it comes to landscaping, we suck. Really, really suck. We don't have houseplants because they die, and quickly.

Finally, we actually did reach a level of embarrassment that propelled us into action. Problem was, we had no clue what we were going to do. By chance, I drove past a landscaping company and saw a teeny tiny firepit that they had on their grounds to give people an idea. Went in and asked who made it, called the guy......no answer.


I have a picture of the inspiration, but can't find it. I'll update once I do!

Not to be deterred, I convinced the DH we could do this ourselves. How hard could it be? So we cleared the land and started on our way.

DH is an engineer, so it involved many plots and graphs so we could get it just right. Yah, those didn't really help.

We tried a square shape, which would have been easier, given that concrete blocks are, well, blocks!

But, that didn't seem right. A circle would work much better. So, after measuring the distances between two garages and a fence, we leveled the ground and jumped right in. (You may notice that, in between, we also decided it would be a GREAT time to add some fence panels to our side of the fence.)

We used spray paint to outline the circle. We drove a piece of ribar into the ground, tied some rope to it and then tied the other end to the can of spray paint and then walked around the ribar in a circle, keeping the rope taut.

After getting a general sense of what it would look like, we dug out the circle for the footer. We dug down about 4 inches and used landscaping edging to help retain the shape of the circle when we poured the concrete. Before we poured in the concrete, we put about 2 inches of very small landscaping stone in to accommodate drainage. We were trying to get the concrete as level as possible, so you see a small block of wood and a small level in my hand that I would use as I worked my way around the circle. (Not gonna lie, I was pretty impressed that from every direction it was level!) I also used small blocks of wood to keep the concrete in place as I moved around. That enabled me to work in smaller sections.We used Quikrete all-purpose concrete for this section.

After we let the concrete set for a few days, it was time to place the first row of concrete blocks. We used 8"x8" blocks to give us a better chance of keeping the circle shape intact. We thought about using 8"x16"s vertically, but it became pretty clunky.

The center block was for me to sit on. Stone turtle underneath is optional.

The difficult part of this process was keeping the concrete between the wedges in place. We would hold our hands there for a few minutes until it began to set, and then move on to the next section. This is definitely a two-person job. At this stage, we also added the smaller landscaping stone to the middle of the pit - again for drainage. We did not add drainage holes to the pit itself. We debated about whether we should but decided that the finished height of the pit (which would be about 16" above ground) didn't require it. After using it for 3 years, we've had no issues (knock on wood).

The turtle is gone!

For the top section, we offset the blocks so they were not directly above the row below. This provided greater stability. Had the same concrete issues with the wedge sections as we did on the first row. For both rows we used a total of 38 8"x8" blocks (19 on each row).

You can see the beginning of the retaining wall in the background.....

Once that was set, it was time to move on to our facing.We discussed many options, but finally landed on a stone veneer in a Pennsylvania Ledgestone design. We laid out the courses ahead of time, but it really didn't help since once we started placing the stones on the pit, our entire plan fell apart. What looked like it would work when laid flat absolutely didn't work on a 3-D surface. The key here was to be flexible. We had many boxes to choose from (since we knew we were also going to build a planting bed) so that helped. We used a product by Dutch Quality Stone and loved it. You can find more information here http://www.dutchqualitystone.com/.

Note: we paid for these products ourselves and have received no compensation from Dutch Quality Stone. Just thought we'd give you the link if you were interested.

I'll put up the next phase of the project next week! Thanks for visiting.

Spackle on!

Maureen