Fire Pit

We finally finished the outside kitchen/party room/spring and fall sleep zone. It's been great. Some nights I watch tv till I fall asleep. We have a couple of hammocks along with a bunch of other seating with some folding tables. Most of the stuff can be put away where it's just an open space. The tv is in a protected cabinet and during the winter we put it away in the house. But now I've been thinking about having a fire pit. We have a place behind the outside kitchen that we build fires with big rocks around the fire. But I want to build a fire pit with rock walls to sit on and have it all covered with a metal roof.
I talked it over with mom and dad. They liked the idea. So me and dad made a plan. We really want to do it right. We are gonna build a rock wall about 2.5 ft high in a circle. Only there will be 3 openings to walk thru. We want the pit where it can be cleaned easier than the other one was. We looked up a lot of different designs but none were what we wanted. So my dad went to work and came back with the design we wanted. Then we went to this guy dad knows that does welding work and we watched him make it. It's like a big square box with a door that opens in the side toward the bottom to get the ashed out. There is a square tray that is welded where the opening is that is big and long enough to use a little shovel to scoop the ashes out. It has a metal top on it so there won't be an opening in the ground. All I will have to do to empty the ashes is open the top of the tray, open the door, and then scoop the ashes out. On the inside, almost at the bottom is a place where grates will go that holds the wood while it's burning. It was cool watching it being built. The bad thing is that we will have to have somebody with some kind of machinery to place it where we are going to put it. It's going to be partially in the ground so we will have to dig everything so it is in the ground at just the right depth.
So first thing was to level the whole place. Then we dug the hole where the fire pit will go. Then we dug the trench for the clean out box (it wasn't that deep). Then the guy used a backhoe to put the thing in place. We filled in around it while we kept it level. When we finished that part, we started on the poles and roof. My dad had gotten 3 12 ft 4x4 poles and 6 8ft 4x4 poles. A neighbor who has a auger on his tractor, drilled the holes. Then we rented a concrete mixer and started pouring the footers. After we had done all 9 footers and put the bolts in the top, we had to let the concrete set up for 2 days.
After the concrete was cured, we put the poles on them using metal brackets. We used 2x4's to keep them in place and level, while we started on the roof. We put on headers on the outside ones. Then we did the headers on the inside ones. Then we put slats that ran opposite to the headers and is what we had to screw the metal to. Then we started putting the metal on. It was hard to do because it was slick and the metal was hard to get the screws to go thru. But we got that done and we even put up gutters on the one side that is next to the outside kitchen. The top of the roof was made to be a round opening about as big as a basketball. There were brackets that stood about a foot above the top of the hole. We put a funnel like thing that didn't have an opening in the top. The bottom was about 2-3 feet across and fit so there was no way it would leak but smoke can get out.
Then we started on the rock walls/seating and the rocks around the pit. This is where the fun became un-fun. We did the rocks around the pit in about 1/2 day. It looks great. It makes it where you can't accidentally touch metal. But the rock wall part wasn't that easy. It took us almost a whole day to do the wall/bench and it was with rocks that were already made to fit in place. Man they were heavy. But when we got it finished, we decided that we didn't like the way the top was. So we took off the top of the wall and got smooth fitted stones to go on top. It made it level and alot easier on the butt. Then we got fitted stones that interlock to make a circle on the ground that went around the whole thing at the edge of the roof like a perimeter. We had to dig all around the thing to put the rocks into it so only about 2 inches of the stone was above the ground. Then we put pea gravel on the ground inside of the whole thing. And it was finished. It only took us a week of hard work but now we have a great looking fire pit that can be used anytime, even while it's raining.
The next night we tried it out. We invited my aunt and uncle and, our neighbor and his family over for dinner. My brother, sister, her husband and Shea came over. We had BBQ ribs, hamburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, slaw, rolls, It was a pretty cool night but with the fire going real good, it was very comfortable. I think I'm gonna like this and we will use it alot. There's nothing like having a fire on cool nights.
So while we were sitting around talking after dinner, my mom said it would be nice if we had actually finished the outdoor kitchen. And I knew that was aimed right at me. I talked my dad out of the plexiglas panes that we were gonna use during the winter. They would fit inside the screen to make it like a sun room for cold days. I thought it would be money spent for something that we would probably never use or if we used them, we would never take them back out (and I like it the way it is now). We talked about it with everybody there giving their opinions. So we ended up agreeing to finish it like we said we would (which in Dad-speak means we start Monday evening).
So let me tell you about this little project. It seems so simple. But it's not. First thing is that we had to have wood trim (like picture frames) on the inside of the screen. They had to be miter cut so they fit perfectly. Then we put weather stripping against that. Then we put the plexiglas against that and then used miter cut 2x2's to hold it in place. Ofcourse we had to use wood sealant cause mom wanted it to look like the rest of the wood (that natural wood look). We had to get 2 new doors to use during the winter. The screen doors were not strong enough to use plexiglas on and they didn't seal good enough. When we got the new doors put up and working right. Then we had to build a rack inside of a closet where all of the panels and 2x2's will be stored when we take them out. That was a pain in the ass. We worked every evening during the week and finally finished Saturday evening. And mom was right, it's nice with all of the windows during a sunny day. It's almost too much sun. But now we can use it year round for just about anything.
And I have decided that we don't need to build anything else for atleast 2 years. Man I'm tired.