The Pit of Despair

Not exactly SSF material per se, but thought it worthy of posting here.

Themis and Jon - the A Team

The story went something like this.

Two years ago (approximately), I bought a bunch of concrete wall blocks at 20% off from Allied Concrete. I had seen some fantastic wall work at my neighbor Dan's house, which he had built himself. So I thought, "Hey. If Dan can do it, we can do it!" Ahh, such enthusiasm.

The blocks showed up on a ginormous palette - caps and all. That was pretty cool. Got to see a lorry try to reverse down our driveway which was also spectacular. Unfortunately, what wasn't so cool was the color of the block. The James River Range was less tan and terracotta and more, well, let's just say PINK. Yep, good old-fashion dusty rose pink. Ugh. So now I had $300 dollars worth of ugly pavers.

Cut to August of this year. In my commitment to build neighborly spirit and to invest in my community in general, I opted to throw a big Guy Fawkes Night for the entire neighborhood. Yep, Sections I, II, & II. For those who don't know what Guy Fawkes Night is, check out Wiki. While that's a lot of people, I was actually sweating the bonfire part, not the people part.

As of September 1st, we still had a big forest with no fire pit. With the help of my dad, we cleared some pines out and now had some open land, but still no pit. Jon wanted to just dig out a small hole and throw some rocks around it, but I had bigger plans . . .

Enter the ugly pink pavers.

Yep. Jon called me crazy. Themis said it wasn't necessary. But I wouldn't listen. What a perfect way to get rid of the ugly blocks and also add an outdoor feature to our house. (I've been watching too many home programs on HGTV).

What I didn't realize when I had this brilliant idea was how much bloomin' work it was going to be.

First off, I wasn't happy just building a small fire pit. Oh no. I had to build an 8 foot wide fire pit. And honestly, the block wasn't the problem - we had plenty. The issue was digging the hole in such a way that we could bury the first course. Don't even ask how many cartfuls of dirt we took out or how many times we almost got the tractor stuck down in Narnia. Some weekends it wasn't pretty.

The beginning.

Next came the leveling. Once we got most of the dirt out, we had to use a tamper in order to ensure that the outside of the ring was level. Easier said than done when a) you build said pit on a slope and b) you try to build pit on top of a boulder. The boulder wasn't fun. Ask Jon. He did most of the sledgehammer work chipping away at horrible big boulder.

Foundation is laid.

Jon gives up the ghost.

Once the leveling was done, we put down 40 lbs of sand around the perimeter of the circle to give us some wiggle room when setting the first course. The first course has got to be right - it's the foundation for the rest of the wall. So we get the foundation down when Jon says to me "Um, you're going to hate me for saying this, but I think those blocks are upside down."

Unfortunately, he was right. So I had to flip them all over and re-measure each brick from center to make sure we kept our perfect circle. (Math has never been my strong suit).

Once the foundation was laid, the rest went smoothly. Thank God. And in fact, I would even go as far as to say it actually wasn't too bad laying the blocks. We used up 98 1/2 blocks, which I have to say was pretty spot on given the fact that I had 100. I didn't even measure! Luck just happened to be on my side.

And to to finish the look, we topped the new fire pit with the caps that had come with the blocks (although they really need to be individually cut to sit properly and possibly be concreted down. But hey, I was pretty impressed to get this far.)

Finished Fire Pit.

In the end, we have a big and lovely fire pit that probably took three weekends to build. Two weekends more than Jon would've liked. And we got rid of all the ugly block as well which was a bonus.

Am I happy with the end result? I think so. Is Jon? Well, better to not ask I that one, me thinks.