Not All Bricks Survive a Fire Pit
Corinne stood in my backyard last Tuesday, hands on hips, looking at the pile of brick I’d hauled home over about six weekends, and said, “Isla. Some of those look…
Concrete Fire Pits: Great Look, Hidden Trap
I think about my fire pit more than is probably normal for a grown woman with a real job. Four nights a week, minimum, March through November, I am out…
Fire Pit on the Lawn: The Brown Circle Problem
I own three fire pits. Three. For one Boston backyard that is, and I am not exaggerating for effect here, twenty two feet by fourteen feet. That is not a…
Leaving a Fire Pit Alone for Just a Minute
I built my first fire pit out of an old brake drum I pulled off a customer’s truck, welded three legs on it in about twenty minutes because I was…
A Fire Pit Left Out All Year
I own four fire pits. Four. I said that number out loud to my sister last month and she just looked at me the way she looks at anything she…
Chimineas on Wood Decks: Tall, Top Heavy and Spark Prone
Everyone talks about chimineas like they’re the polite, contained cousin of a fire pit. Something you can tuck into a corner of a deck, light with one match, and forget…
Regular Cement in a Fire Pit: Fine Until It Is Not
I own fourteen fire pits at this point, which is a number I only know because I actually sat down one night and counted them off my phone, scrolling back…
Is a Fire Pit on a Deck Actually Safe?
I have measured the distance between my fire pit and my deck railing four separate times this summer, with an actual tape measure, standing there in my socks like a…
Composite Decking and Fire Pits: Melting Is the Worry
I own eleven offcuts of composite decking board right now, sitting in a milk crate in my garage, and every single one of them has some kind of scorch mark,…
Fire Pits on Porcelain Tiles: Tough, but Not Invincible
I torched a two hundred dollar paver with a forty dollar fire bowl, and the worst part is I stood there and watched it happen like it was somebody else’s…