DIY Firepit: A Low Cost Weekend Project

We have a rambling, brambling patch of woods in our backyard. When we moved in to our house two and a half years ago there was a sorry old wood pile back there and a shallow pit for burning.  Since then I envisioned a new fire pit and I pinned quite a few elaborate set ups knowing that we would probably settle for something less.  Our neighbor began to clear his woods a while back and my husband and I let out a collective sigh, as our woods now look more rambling and brambling against the backdrop of his rather park-like setting.  As much as I would like to clear things back there, we have more pressing projects to attend to in our backyard--like filling in a monstrous dip that runs through the middle of it and  becomes a little creak at the first drop of rain.

I thought fire pit plans were put on the back burner. But shortly after I mentioned creating a fire ring from brick, I could see my husband's wheels start turning. One Saturday I found him cleaning up the old burning area and gazing at the huge pile of wood we had stacked from some trees we had cut down in May. And I knew with a gentle prod, we would be sitting around a fire that very night.

The most wonderful thing about this project is that it cost us ZERO dollars because we used things that were already laying around back there. We worked on it together and had fun doing it--which is another big plus. I think it turned out pretty well!

Here's what we did:

First we surveyed our scene and gathered up all the material we had in the yard: old brick and stones.  NOTE:  We did not use fire brick--because we did not have it on hand and this was a spur of the moment project.

We made a makeshift compass with a stick tied to a the string from a chalk line tape. For some reason, there is no string to be found in our garage. But this worked just fine!

As you can see we got a pretty decent circle. Jim held the yellow part in the center of where we wanted our pit and I drew the ring in the dirt with my stick. We wanted our ring to have about a 36" diameter so we added 7" to that to account for the width of the bricks we were using. To make our compass, we just halved that number to get the length of our string. We were not super precise, but it turned out just fine! 

Then it was on to digging our pit. We dug out our circle to the depth of our brick

I did some digging too...Just don't have a picture of it because Jim rarely picks up the camera.

Then we lined the outside of our circle with the bricks we found. Somehow we ended up having enough brick to complete our circle...but we did have to go digging around to find the last two bricks that we needed.

We filled the gaps in the brick with some sand...but that didn't really work out as well as I thought it would.
Then we gathered up the larger stones that were piled up in the yard and put them around the pit.  We also moved some large stumps in to use as a place to rest your derriere or a place to rest your beverage.

 We have quite a pile of logs back there because of the trees we had cut down this year. They just need to be split! Here's our finished pit. We plan to put some gravel back there so there won't be any mud. We've had three fires in it since putting it in and the brick is holding up for now. We figure at worst, the brick will eventually crack, and when it does we will replace it with fire brick. Until then, S'mores at our house, anyone?

I love impromptu projects that turn out better than expected--especially ones that cost little to no money! Have you done any recently?