What do you love to do beyond work? Besides bike riding, traveling, exercising to lose weight and community building, I love working with my hands. I’m no expert, but I am an avid learner and I find tremendous joy in creating things. This fire pit was my latest project. My goal was to fund the pit through recent Google Adsense revenue and recyclables too, which was a fun layer to pulling this off. I considered something a bit more fancy or with mortar, but this will work for now.
How I built a fire pit: I bought everything at Home Depot for about $200. It literally took me 1 hour to do this after everything was unloaded into the backyard. Step 1: Lay out your design. Step 2: Dig about six inches down so you have room to lay sand throughout the area where your pit will be. Step 3: Pour four or so bags of paver sand or play sand. Make sure the sand is level. If it is not level the final product is going to look really bad. Step 4: Stack the stones making sure they are level while stacking. Some folks use an adhesive to stick the blocks together, but I chose not to because I didn’t want an adhesive anywhere near flames.
I’m excited for the opportunities this fire pit will create to connect with family and friends. Additionally, it’ll be a perfect space for inviting neighbors over for planned or spontaneous gatherings. I’m telling you, a larger porch and having something to do in the backyard is a potent recipe to build relationships with neighbors.
Community Building 101: By the way, in case it might be helpful, I wrote a series called Community Building 101 a few years ago. If you are tinkering with the idea of how to begin to improve your neighborhood, this short mini-essay series might be relevant. Let me know what you think. Download HERE (pdf).
Question: What types of things do you buyers look for in a backyard?
If you liked this post, subscribe by email (or RSS). Thanks for being here.