Earlier this summer we built a fire pit, and then the photos sat on my computer and I never blogged it.  So here we go.  Our good friend Matt came over and the boys built the thing in just a few hours.  I read a few tutorials the night before.  This one and This one are what I mostly referenced, and of course Paul had his own plan in his mind.  I was busy mulching that day, so I got no pictures of the process... bad blogger.

We started the night before by determining the size of the pit that we wanted, we had previously picked out the stones we wanted to use, so a bit of geometry and we had determined the number of stones to buy. 

We laid out a circle larger than the fire pit in spray paint.  We picked the center and then measured out several points and then connected the dots with spray paint.  We made the area about 24" larger, that way there would be a 12" gravel area between the stones and the grass.  

We dug the spray painted circle, roughly 5" down, and then filled it with about 2" of paver base and tamped it down.  

Then we laid the stone blocks in a circle, building up the layers alternating the seams  (we didn't glue them together because I wan't 100% sure if it would stay in its location in the next few years as we work on the backyard).  

Finally we filled in a little more paver base on the inside of the pit and added pea gravel on the outside of the ring and tamped it all down.  

Paul broke it in that evening with a nice little fire, and a beer. 

-Meg