Building a Fire Pit

Having built two or three firepits (and I only mean small fire pits for homes) in my life, I feel I’m at the point where I know enough about the process that I don’t necessarily need a manual or info from online, yet I’d still look it up anyway.

What that really translates to is “I know what I’m doing, but I want to make sure.”

There’s something fun about building up a fire pit to me. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m building a permanent structure. Maybe it’s because it can be done in a day and not toiled over forever. Maybe it’s just my love of fire pits and small campfires and the talks and fun that ensues these sort of things.

Regardless, I wanted to walk you through a few steps (since that’s really all it takes for a fire pit). My way definitely isn’t the only way, or the best, but it’ll get the job done for a structure that can weather the elements and even someone falling or tripping into the stones.

Dig.

Yep. You’ll want a base that’s actually slightly below the ground level in order for the bricks to settle and have a permanence that’s much sturdier than just stacking the bricks around on top of the ground. This also helps to level the pit. Don’t worry too much about your digging being perfectly flat. The next step will help with that.

Lay down pea gravel.

Pea gravel is perfect for being the next layer since you can smooth it out as needed until it’s perfectly level. You can actually use a few cardboard boxes that you’ve broken down and lay them on top of the pea gravel and push where needed to flatten out sections all at once if needed.

Base layer pavers.

This is what I do next, though some people may not agree with. I like to take 2’ by 2’ pavers and place them in the shape of what I want my pit to look like, but this only applies to the outside edges of where the bricks will be sitting. This is just to give the actual pit bricks a solid base to sit on. Again, use those cardboard boxes again if the gravel shifts from the heavier pavers.

Fire bricks.

These are primarily for keeping heat in above the ground. I layer these between the pavers in a way that makes the base all touching. You’ll want these to be in the center of your pit for the main reason of keeping heat in and not seeping down. Also, these are fireproof and won’t scorch any parts underneath.

Lay your bricks.

This is the step most of you probably know how to do anyway. There’s no right or wrong way to layer bricks. What I will say is that having a metal insert to “hold” the bricks together is the way to go so that they never cave in or collapse outward thanks to the metal insert holding onto all bricks at once in a way that they cannot come out on their own. I don’t necessarily cement my bricks together, but you can if you want to.

And tada! You can obviously make your pit as big or small as you want to and even take the liberty of doing some of these steps your own way, but this is a basic fire pit in my experience and it’ll hold up for a long time!

Treat Yourself

Treating yourself is one of the biggest things that has caught on in America’s younger generations in the past few years. When the phrase “treat yourself” first started catching on, I wasn’t quite sure where it came from or what people actually meant by it. Eventually, though, I realized that the phrase and “movement” spawned simply because so many people were too worried about others, their relationships, and how society viewed them.

At first, everyone took it how it was originally meant to be taken and would treat themselves to the things they liked, the things they enjoyed and wanted to do for themselves. This was exactly what the phrase meant to its core, and people became happier and more self sufficient because of it.

But lately, the phrase seems to be a bit overused and acts as an excuse to overspend, overeat, and do things that likely aren’t too great on the psyche or everyday habits. Treat yourself has become a way to justify buying expensive clothes, wasting money on elaborately lavish foods, or having cardboard boxes full of candy sent to your home on a monthly basis.

And to me, this goes against the whole point. These things you’re treating yourself should be few and far in between as well as something you genuinely enjoy. If an item is just a slight interest of yours or doesn’t mean much to you, treating yourself becomes an obligation and not a true treat, a real gift for rewarding what you’ve done for yourself in the past week or month.

I think that’s the problem, though. People have access to pretty much any good or service they could ask for at the tips of their fingers thanks to subscription services that ship cardboard boxes full of who knows what anywhere and everywhere. With such ease of access now, it’s easy to get ahead of yourself and go overboard with spending, eating, or anything else you do.

The saying “all good things come in moderation” could not be truer. The more you allow yourself to do something, the less exciting or interesting or great it feels to do. The less so, the more you crave it. A balance is needed in pretty much every aspect of life, and so it comes as no surprise that treating yourself should to. Just don’t get carried away by justifying every single thing you buy and do as treating yourself or else you’ll get sucked into the hole of the phrase it’s become.

Organizing Your Garage with Boxes

My wife and I made a big change in our life.  It was a change of location and a change in how we lived.  Our entire married life we lived in apartments and we have not had to be responsible for taking care of the place we lived.  But we found a home that needed lots of work in the best neighborhood in the State.  The price was in our range due to the home and we decided to purchase it and fix it up.  This was a massive task for us and it ended up being a big mess.  But we learned many things through this whole process and it turns out that working on your home in winter is a hard thing. 

 

What we found was that working in winter made it really hard.  We would have to fix a room and all the things in that room needed to be moved to another room.  Then we were able to work on it but when multiple rooms were involved the home became so cluttered that we struggled to work.  Our garage filled completely up and that was at the time our only place to work.  At the end of the winter, we finally fixed the majority of the house but the garage was so full that it was not useable for anything.  It was cram-packed with tools and leftover products that we had used to fix up the home.  It was really sad to have an entire section of our home to be worthless.  So we decided we had to do something.

 

The main issue was that buying shelves or making shelves was out of the question. This is because it was simply too expensive and we were out of money that we could spend.  If anything went wrong with the home we were honestly in trouble.  So we decided that there had to be an option.  There were too many tools to get destroyed if we left it all out and we didn't want to waste anything. This is where we decided to go outside the box.  But in reality, we were not going to far outside the box because most attics are stored this way.  We decided to organize with all the cardboard boxes that we had stored away from the move. 

 

The idea was to store things vertically and create our own storage system.  It was based on the idea of usage.  We wanted the most used items to be stacked up on top.  So we labeled each box and numbered them from one to 5 based on how high we could stack the boxes in the garage.  So we put the most used tools and products on the top with box number five and we went piece by piece until we could make our first stack in the garage.  It was really important, to be honest with how much use we would get out of it.  It took a lot of arguing back and forth but several hours later we had half of the garage clean.  By the time we were done, we had cardboard boxes filling 1/4 of the garage and 3/4 of the garage that is totally free and clear.  It was a wonderful way to organize our garage for free. The system worked well and we ended up getting one car in there.