How to Make an Inexpensive Fire Pit

For the past couple of years, as we lay in bed with our iPads at night, I have been trying to get Mr. Wonderful to see the light about Pinterest.   I would “ooo” and “aaaaah” over some other things…I even tried to lure him into its addictive ways by showing him there were cars on it, but he would simply nod, put his headphones back on and go back to his usual watching of YouTube videos that often lead him down the rabbit trail of everything from water ski tricks to hot rod races to those horrible “fail” videos that always make me cringe.

And then one day I showed him how one could search for “how to make a fire pit” and with all the ideas that came up, the man was hooked.

He is slowly transforming our backyard into something special with everything from raised garden beds to a new deck made out of pallets. But this was his first project and I just think it’s beautiful.

He started out by buying these stones at our local Home Depot. They are called Pavestone Rumblestone and with a sale and some finagling by Mr. W., he ended getting them for about $2.00/each I believe.

Next came the leveling of the area. He had to dig up grass and using pieces of wood with a level on them, worked on scraping the soil and getting it level.  Then he laid down his first ring of stones.

He used 12 in all.

As you can see, Max helped by sniffing his approval.

Next he poured pebbles inside and about a foot around the outside of the first ring of bricks.   If you aren’t using flagstone like we did, you could use pebbles as the base of your fire pit ring and pour it out three or four feet to make the “patio” aspect of the fire pit area for a seating area.

Again he laid the board across the first layer and check for it to be level.

Next came the second ring. You place one stone directly centered on two stones below making sure the space between the two lower stones is directly down the middle of the stone you’re placing on top.

We opted not to glue these as the stones are heavy enough to stand by themselves and just in case someday we wanted to move them.  Like I said, we’ve never had a problem with them shifting or moving. They are pretty darn heavy. I would also like to say, I didn’t get may pictures from this point on, because I was helping place rocks. I do help with something every once in a while other than taking pictures ya know.

Next came the third layer of the stones and then Mr. Wonderful add a couple of bags more of the pebbles, to provide a nice thick rock bottom for the pit.

And then we set about placing all the stones…I say “we” because, again I helped!

We will probably fill in the dirt spaces around the flagstone at some point with more pea gravel or even cement to make it more stable for benches or chairs.

We have a path leading down the backyard made out of the same flagstone.

Mr. Wonderful also laid the flagstone from the fire pit area leading out to the main path going down the backyard so it matches.

And then strategically, he placed some iron tiki torches around the pit area and walkway.

The end result has been really nice.

We tested it out that first weekend.

And man, was I ever glad Mr. W. found Pinterest.