How To: Build a Fire Pit

Remember when I told you guys that we bought that huge above-ground pool? Yeah, well we already got rid of it--and by 'got rid of it' I mean 'drained and slashed it then threw it away.' Turns out that the pool just couldn't handle the Murrieta heat. We had chemicals in it and were constantly cleaning it--and it turned green (like, swamp green). It was disgusting. Even the kids were grossed out. So, Joe and I decided to get rid of it. I debated trying to sell it on Craigslist--considering we only bought it 5 weeks ago and it was in perfect condition--but once we got all of the water out of it and saw how dirty it actually was, I decided not to. We had such an amazing time together as a family last summer, and even though summer is just getting started, we could already tell that it wasn't the same. We decided to bring back our old-smaller pool that was loved so much last year :).

Once the gigantic pool was down, we were left with a "crop circle" of dead grass where the pool once was. We knew that we were going to have to sod it--and we've talked about building a fire pit for well over a year now--so it was the perfect time to do it. The fire pit alone cost $50 to build (and we spent about $60 on sod to get rid of that circle of dead grass).  Have you been debating building a fire pit in your backyard? I can honestly say that it was ridiculously easy--took us about 15 minutes (laying the sod, however, took some time)--and looks great. We found a pinterest tutorial on how to make one but it was pretty vague--so we figured it out ourselves. Here's how we did it: 

FIRST AND FOREMOST: make sure the kids are occupied so they aren't in your way ;)

See--totally a crop circle in our backyard ;)

The supplies...

The sod...

Make your beginning ring: these specific blocks have a 'lip' on them--make sure that 'lip' is faced UP; it'll give it a nice finished look when you're done building it (we got about halfway done building it then realized that we needed to flip them over). 

Offset the blocks and just stack them! You could concrete them together if you wanted to but its not necessary: these blocks are HEAVY and they aren't going anywhere!

After the sod was laid! I'm in love with how it looks!

We finished off the look by putting lava rocks at the bottom of the pit (don't mind the discoloration: Joe was in the middle of hosing down the sod while I was taking the pictures; some of the rocks got wet). 

The blocks that we bought were $1.28 a piece, and this fire pit needs 33 blocks (these specific blocks come in a few different color choices; we bought them at Lowes). Once your fire pit is all set up, the size of it should fit a standard fire pit bowl that you can buy anywhere; we have one but its pretty rusted and dirty so we decided to leave it out and just have this be a "bonfire" style fire pit :) I cant wait to make some s'mores with the kids tonight!!