City Backyard, Fire Pit: Squeezing One In
My mom stood in my backyard with a tape measure hanging out of her coat pocket, looked at the eight feet between my back door and the fence, then looked…
Indoor Fire Pits: Love the Idea, Not the Reality
I have typed “can you have a fire pit indoors” into a search bar four separate times over the past two years, always in November, always on the first night…
Artificial Grass and Fire Pits: A Meltdown Waiting?
Okay so I currently own four fire pits. FOUR. One of those little tabletop propane ones that looks like a marshmallow toaster, one cheap steel bowl thing from a big…
Charcoal in a Fire Pit: Not What It Was Built For?
I’ll tell you the honest version of this story, not the version where I look competent, because that one’s a lie. Two summers ago I bought a fire pit off…
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…
A Fire Pit Inside a Gazebo: Cozy Idea, Careful Answer
Marcus texted me a photo at eight o’clock on a Friday night. New gazebo, cedar posts, asphalt shingle roof he’d put on himself over a long weekend, and sitting dead…
Fire Pit on a Concrete Slab
I bought my first fire pit off a clearance rack in early October, the kind of purchase that made complete sense at 9pm on a Tuesday and almost none the…
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…