DIY Backyard Firepit 36"

Hey from the forgotten back corner of my yard. It's time to get to the next project on this forgotten sad corner of the yard. We've been really enjoying this beautiful pergola. We love it. It's so pretty and it looks so out of place compared to this sadness. I took down my old playset. Got an idea for something new that my kids will like but today's project is for a fire pit. I picked up these wall blocks at Home Depot. I liked the texture on them. It kind of went with my fence. I picked up a fire ring a couple years ago because I was set on doing this like three years ago and well I put the ring down on the ground and we've used it but now it's got to become official. So I really like these blocks. I like the look of them but I don't love the diameter of my circle which is 36 on the inside. I have these big gaps between the blocks. So I bought a masonry blade for my circular saw and apparently I'm a glutton for punishment and I'm gonna be cutting all these so hopefully they'll fit together really nicely. For this backyard fire pit I used a 36 inch metal fire ring, 39 old castle victorian blend wall blocks, 14 old castle wall caps, two tubes of concrete adhesive, eight bags of paper base or you could use gravel if you have some laying around, four bags of granite rocks, some string, spray paint, and template for the blocks. The tools I used were a shovel, wheelbarrow, a tamper, a colt gun, a level, circular saw with a masonry blade although you could if you had a cement saw that probably would be better or you could rent one, and then a hammer. I also use you know general things like tape measure and you know pencil and stuff like that. The wall blocks had this little lip on the back edge which made it so my blocks wouldn't sit flat so I just trimmed that off real quick. You can print my block template off from my website. I'll put a link down below. The template will give you a 36 inch inside diameter fire pit. When you're printing these off make sure your printer is set on 100% and not fit to page otherwise everything gets goofy. So I bought a 7 inch masonry blade that fits on my circular saw and this worked out pretty good. If you have a concrete saw that might be a little easier or you can rent one. The problem with the 7 inch saw blade is you can only cut through half the block at a time so you actually have to cut it outside diameter of the blocks and the needed space was just over 52 inches. I placed a string around a stick and painted a circle at about 27 inches out from the center. This gave me a 54 inch diameter circle and a little wiggle room. Then I dug the grass and dirt out to about 7 inches deep. I tried to somewhat level the hole at this point just to make sure I was on track. This area of my yard is the low point and sometimes it can get really wet so I wanted to add a gravel drain in the center of my fire pit. I dug a hole about 12 inches deep right in the center and then filled it with gravel to help with the drainage. The next step is to spread the paper base or gravel into the fire pit area one to two inches at a time and compact the base down with a tamp each layer. I had some old concrete from a bad sidewalk that I took up a few years ago that I used for the base layers. I used that for about three layers and then I added the bag paper base on top of that. Add one to two inches more paper base and tamp until you get the height of the base that you want to start the first row of blocks. I put the first row of blocks about an inch below the surface. I plan on coming back here and doing a paper patio at some point in time and so I left the fire pit just below the grass surface. To start laying the blocks I first placed the fire ring center on the paper base. Then I placed the first row of blocks all around the fire ring. On the first row of blocks I did leave a one or two inch gap to allow for air to flow into the fire pit. I'm not sure my fire pit would be tall enough to choke a fire from the lack of air but I added the little gap just in case. On the 13th block I had to cut that one to fit. Then I removed the fire ring and used the four foot level to try and level the first row of blocks the best that I could. A little base was removed here and a little base was added there. Then I could get the first row pretty flat. In between rows I used masonry adhesive spreading in a squiggly pattern on top of the blocks. This adhesive is spread using a caulk gun and it is very stiff. Lots and lots of squeezing to get that stuff out. I staggered my second row and again my third row spreading masonry adhesive in between the layers. I left the fire ring in the middle as a guide raising the fire ring up with spacers as I went. Oh and I should mention I think I had to knock off some tabs on the fire ring to make it fit. It had some mounting tabs that were in the way. Finally I added my wall caps for the top. The last cap block had to be cut to fit. Like I mentioned I've had this ring outside for a while and so it looked pretty bad. I scrubbed the ring with a wire brush and then I used some of the Rust-Oleum high temp paint and repainted it and it looks pretty slick right now. And finally I added a nice thick layer of granite rocks to the bottom. The thing I really liked about this fire ring is that it had the swinging grate so we could grill on the fire. I let the concrete adhesive dry and then we were excited to try out the new fire pit. We are absolutely loving our fire pit and I don't know what took me so long to get it done but I should have done it sooner. Thanks for watching and make sure to subscribe. See you next time for week four of the big build off.