DIY Sunday: Fire Pit Gravel Patio

Good Evening!

I meant to get to this sooner today, but we had a fun day as a family. We enjoyed coffee on the new patio (click here for the patio post) and then went to check out a friend's barn that is being torn down. We are hoping to score some cool barn wood for a wall in our basement aka the "man room." We also have a potential headboard solution if everything works out. (Spoiler...it will be insanely cool!) Then we went and ordered new interior doors (so excited!!) and got paint for our bedroom. All in all a pretty laid back day. Well it's a laid back for me at least. My husband would have just liked to watch the Twins and napped.

Two weeks ago I was rushing to finish our fire pit area before we had people over. We just finished the patio, but I wanted somewhere to put a fire pit. I love sitting around a fire, drinking a beer and laughing with good friends. It was pretty much how I spent all my summers in college (and it rocked!).

I didn't want to spend a ton of money on this area, and I am happy to say the entire project took about $150. It was a super quick project that took an afternoon. That's not bad for all the materials and the fire pit itself. The chairs were free curb side finds. (Check out the post on their rehab here)

Fire Pit Gravel Patio

Materials

No Dig Edging (We used 2 packages)

Extra Stakes for Edging

String

Landscape Fabric (We used 6 foot wide fabric)

Gravel (We used about 20 bags total) or Sand

Fire Pit 

Hammer

Utility Knife

Optional: Bricks for under the Fire Pit

Cost: $150.00
Time: The entire project took only a few hours.

Directions

1. Level & Lay Landscape Fabric

The first thing you really need to determine is how big your pit is going to be and the shape. I went through some different ideas and my Facebook followers help me decide on a circle connected to the patio. Revolutionary I know. Our fire pit area has a diameter of 14 feet. You will want the area relatively level. I didn't get too worked up about making it perfect since I could fill in the low areas with more gravel, but you don't want huge humps either. 

You will want to lay your fabric in a larger area than your anticipated size. You can cut away excess fabric after your edging is down. Since I knew the stakes in the edging would hold down the fabric, I didn't staple it down. I just put something heavy at each end to keep the fabric flat. 

2. Install Edging

I knew I wanted my design to be a circle, and I wanted it about 14 feet wide. So I decided where center would be and put a stake in the ground with 7 feet of string attached to another stake. You could use extra edging stakes or scrap wood (I used scrap wood ). As I put the edging in, I used this set up as my guide. I also used my own judgment to see if it was looking like a smooth curve. I did move a couple of stakes here and there to make it look better. 

Also, if you plan on doing curves, you should plan on getting extra stakes. I got about 16 extra stakes over what came with the edge pieces. I had some stakes left over, but I just used them to keep the fabric down if it was buckling anywhere. 

After the edging is installed, use your utility knife to cut away the excess fabric on the outside of the edging 

3. Dump Gravel

I had some bricks left over from the patio so I quickly put those down to put the fire pit on top of. Totally unnecessary, but it did make it look more finished. After that, we dumped gravel and then spread it around the area. You could alternately put down sand if you want a beach feel. Sand was the original plan but then I remembered that I hate sand. I added some sand initially and then put gravel on top. We have bought some more gravel since these pictures were taken.

4. Add a Fire Pit & Enjoy

I grabbed an inexpensive fire pit from Walmart and put it together in a half hour or so. I may install a stone fire pit next year or after this pit gets shabby, but at 50 bucks I couldn't beat the price! It's also nice a deep fire pit for all the big logs we have stacked in our yard.

I am really happy how this project turned out and it already was a blast. I can't wait for the fall weather to enjoy it even more!

Show & Tell: Curb Side Chair Upcycle

Good Morning!

Our outdoor patio (post here) and our firepit sand area (post coming on Sunday) needed some extra seating. My father-in-law came to the rescue without even knowing I needed more chairs. During city wide clean up, he saw these chairs sitting on the corner.  Knowing that I love a good challenge (and free curb side furniture), he picked them up for me. 

Sure they were rough around the edges. They had seen better days and less rust. But all they really needed was some TLC and a couple cans of spray paint. 

The rehab on these chairs was pretty straight forward. First of all, I took a good look to see if they could come apart easily. When there is fabric involved, the painting goes about a hundred times smoother if you can get the metal by itself. Thankfully they came apart with just eight screws.  I took them apart with some "help" from my kiddos. 

Once they were in pieces, the seats got put into a plastic tote filled will soapy water. I let them sit for an hour or so. I was pretty amazed by how much dirt came off each seat. They got rinsed and hung up to air dry. 

While the seats soaked and dried, each metal base got a ton of prep work. The first thing you have to do is get any flaking paint off the surface. Then you need to smooth out the surface with a wire brush and/or sander. I rough up all surfaces to help all the paint stick better. 

Each chair took a solid can of spray paint. In fact I came up a bit short on the lighter colors so I ended up painting the metal on the seats with either a metallic silver or gold instead of matching the chair color. I wish I would have had enough to do all the seats in silver or gold, but you work with what you got, right?

I'm happy with the results! I would have loved to paint or replace the fabric but it was in good shape and I didn't want to mess with a good thing. Check the chairs out in action on Sunday's post about our firepit area!  

 

DIY Sunday: The No Good Terrible Paver Patio Project

Hello!

We had a wonderful weekend with friends. The weather was pretty perfect especially out on our new patio and firepit! 

Our patio was one of those projects that wouldn't seem to end. We bought the pavers when they were on sale about 2-3 months ago. We finally started digging about a month ago, and we finished last weekend. 

We decided to go with pavers after my in-laws gave us over 200 free paver bricks. The same week Lowes had pavers on sale 3 for a $1.00, so we figured, why not?

Because it sucked. Dear lordy. For someone that hates to measure, it was the fifth circle of hell.  First of all, digging up the grass was fast with a tractor but getting it to anything that resembled an even surface was work. Then you have to try to keep it level as you add in the different layers. Ha. That's funny. With two children that saw it as either a sand box or a starter hillbilly pool (depending on the day) we gave up on that myth early on. 

         

While we only spent maybe $300 or so on the pavers, the paver base and sand can add another $400 to the cost. We were lucky because my father-in-law knew a guy that could hook us up with some free rock and sand. (No. He's not in the South Dakota gravel pit mob)

When it came time to level out the sand, we just about screamed. My husband threatened to put an ad on Craigslist to find someone to finish the project. The kids removed sand at the rate we added it. They made sand castles in the area we just leveled.

My husband decided to take a nap at this point. I kept forging ahead. I decided to lay the paver edging while he slept. I got all the different tools I thought I needed to lay the patio. I worked on laying a perfect 12 by 12 square for about 3 hours. 

Husband comes back out refreshed, and the first thing he says is "uh. That's not square" I step back and look from a different angle. Yes. It's not square. At all. Commence the string of expletives that would make a sailor blush. 

At that moment we made a decision. How much did we value a level professional looking patio? We decided we valued our sanity, children's lives and marriage much more and just started laying bricks. We tried to keep them level as we moved along, but it isn't perfect. Which is really a metaphor of our life with two young children. 

Of course, it couldn't be that easy. Remember those free bricks we got? The ones we just were sure were the same size as the bricks we bought? The free bricks that were the only reason we decided to proceed on this aggregating quest? 

Nope. Not the same size. Just a hair wider and longer. Shoot. Me. Now. 

So we stared at the patio in the 90+ degree 450% humidity weather. Our brains were a burnt out melted mush. The Craiglist threat became a viable solution. Finally I realized we could just do a border with the free bricks, and we survived. Since we couldn't use the free bricks, we were 92 bricks short. We just made our tri-daily trip to Lowes and got it covered.

The kids were creating some sort of building with sand, bricks and wood.

Once we laid the pavers (over several days) we felt victorious. We had finished the patio. We had done the seemly impossible summer project. We no longer had a hole of mud in the backyard.

Then comes putting sand in the crevices. Easy right? Get the polymorphic sand they said. It will be easier they said. ("They" are the online tutorials I read and mostly ignored during this process) 

Well once I read the side of the bucket I realized the sand wasn't going to be all that easy. Apparently you can stain the brick if there is any sand left on the surface. (Specifically, red colored brick had a higher likelihood of staining) They recommend using a paint brush to sweep into each crack. That sounds like a ton of fun. We tried with the broom first. It became very clear that we didn't have enough sand. Awesome. Another trip to the store. (Face Palm)

Also, with polymorphic sand, you're racing the clock because you need to finish and let it dry 24 hours before it rains. We checked the weather report. No rain for days. We are good to start. Next day I go back to do the second bucket. Weather report now says it's going to rain for three days starting tomorrow evening. Well that's great. I've got to get the sand down immediately.

After doing a bit  more reading on the Young House Love blog, I found I could have used less sand and had an easier life if I wouldn't have just poured the sand right on the pavers the first time around (which was what the directions on the bucket said because they are capitalist pricks that want me to buy extra sand ;) ). The Young House Love blog suggested putting the sand in a ziplock bag, cut a corner and poured it in the cracks directly ala frosting bag style. That worked way way better. I even sat there and cleared every brick with a paint brush. 6 hours of paint brushing and filling cracks later, the sand was done. I wet it down and did an "anti-rain" dance

I woke up in the morning feeling rested. My bed was nice and cool, there was a nice breeze coming in, and I heard the gentle sound of rain drops on the roof. Yeah. Apparently weathermen are right on par with the accuracy of palm readers. (Bright side: I have a long life line and should have four kids)

Well the sand kinda survived and after spending 6 hours in the sun on a hot patio with a paint brush, I wasn't doing the process over again.  I moved our patio furniture out to the patio and drank a glass (okay, bottle) of wine and enjoyed our patio.

Would I do the project again? Sure. I would totally hire someone to do the project again. Ha!

Check back next week when I talk about our much easier (and cheaper) firepit addition to the deck. Now that was a highly rewarding project I would recommend. Positive attitude restored.