Our New Firespace

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a camping and campfire junkie. I could camp every weekend and have a backyard campfire every night of the week. In April, my amazing husband surprised me with a new Ranch fire pit, by Bighorn.

Also in late April, we had our front porch redone and the back patio paved. Our old patio consisted of these very old two foot stone tiles, placed on the ground outside our back door and under the awning.

Drove me nuts. I realize it was probably an economical solution to whoever put them in at the time, but the constant maintenance made me want to pull my hair out. It needed continual sweeping and pulling of weeds that would pop up in between the tiles. And we have maple trees! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Yes, those millions of “helicopters” that completely infiltrate your yard, including the ALL the spaces between the tiles.

Me (on a pretty much weekly basis): “Have I told you how much I hate this patio?”

Bill: “Only about a thousand times.”

So when we had the porch quoted, I showed the concrete dude the back porch as well and was delighted at the cost to do both. When the time came, we picked up the stone tiles and carefully stacked them in the backyard, and that’s when I had the idea to create a new area for the fire pit.

At the time we had a small, off the ground fire pit with legs, and I placed it on a single circular stone tile. Now we had over 30 of these multicolored tiles and I thought a 10″ by 10″ area for our new fire pit would look very cool and also keep the sparks and kindling remnants off the grass.

So I got some of that black fabric that’s supposed to keep the weeds out but let water through. This past weekend we staked out a 10″ by 10″ area with tent stakes and got to work.

This isn’t by any stretch a how-to article, just a recap of our project. All we used was the netting and extra dirt to level the stones the best we could. I know you are supposed to use sand when putting down stones for walkways/patios, but we both felt they would settle in over time and we were fine if it wasn’t perfectly level throughout.

I also discovered we didn’t have enough green stones (not all were in the best of shape) to do a complete checkerboard pattern, but oh well. Once we had the fire pit and chairs in place, I was as happy as a clam. We power washed the tiles the next day and it looked even nicer.

Bill also mentioned perhaps down the road using that paint you use for garage floors, which would cover up the mismatched pattern. Hmmmm.. (stroking chin)

We toasted beers once we got the first fire rolling but it was soon rained out. Tonight we celebrated again with smoked sausage.

Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood!