Very nice!

We just an internal light today and started the painting project.  The 70s whore house hallway is dead.

Like the fixture you guys got.

I completely forgot to take pictures of the old fire pit (it was just a bunch of big rocks laid out in something approximating a circle), as well as the digging and leveling that I did before I poured in the gravel.  Long story short, dig a hole roughly 5' in diameter and nine inches deep, and level out the bottom of the hole as best as you can.  Make sure you use an actual level (4' level FTW) and don't try to eyeball it, as the surface of your yard is probably not terribly level to begin with.



I bought and assembled a heavy duty wheelbarrow for this project.  You absolute do not want to try doing this kind of project without one!  If you don't already have a wheelbarrow, I'd recommend buying one that has two wheels as you're going to be moving a lot of weight.  I bought this wheelbarrow as part of a "mix and match" kit (you buy the tray, handles, and wheels/accessories separately and have multiple options for each) at Menards for about $100, but there are plenty of cheaper options.

After leveling the bottom of the pit and checking depth throughout, start adding gravel.  It took me 25 bags of 3/4" drainage gravel to add get ~7" of depth.  Each bag is 0.5 cubic feet.  Use a steel-tined gardening rake to keep the gravel level, and double-check this using the 4' level mentioned earlier.



Here's a quick shot showing the finished hole filled with gravel and all of the bricks needed to build the walls of the pit.



I completely zoned out on providing pictures of setting the first course (row) of bricks.  The fire pit comes with instructions that show the ordering for each course and how to offset the upper courses from the previous course.  The first course is the most important.  Each brick needs to be leveled from front to back, as a minor forward or backward tilt can result in substantial gaps as the courses stack up.  Bricks also need to be leveled across the course (e.g. from the 12:00 brick to the 6:00 brick) to make sure the entire pit doesn't end up crooked, but this shouldn't be a problem if you leveled the base of the hole and the gravel before building the wall.  A heavy rubber mallet is very useful for this stage of the project.

The bricks within a course are not glued together, but each course is glued to the one below it as shown above. 




Here's a shot of my beautiful wife laying down the final bricks.  I couldn't have completed this project without her help!



I used a battery-powered Ryobi caulk gun and six tubes of landscaping adhesive.  The battery-powered caulk gun is reeeeally nice to have, but completely unnecessary if you don't other projects requiring one.



Here's about half of the dirt we dug out of the pit.  It's amazing how much dirt came out of that hole.  One of the hardest parts of the entire project was figuring out where to put all of this dirt when we were done.  I filled every hole in the yard, placed some near the base of the garage, and threw a bunch of it at the base of our trees.  You can also see the sticks that I pulled out of the old pit, and the stones that used to ring the old pit in the background.



Here's the finished product.  Once the last course of bricks is set, the fire ring is inserted.  Just in case 12.5 cubic feet of drainage gravel wasn't enough, another 2.5 cubic feet of pea gravel is added to the bottom of the pit.  This finer gravel allows ashes to be washed down with a hose while retaining any unburnt material.  I filled in the exposed drainage gravel outside of the bricks and seeded it with grass seed and fertilizer, so hopefully it will look better in a few weeks!


So there it is.  This is the "Ashwell" fire pit kit from Menards, which costs ~$500.  They have much cheaper kits as well, and there are a variety of shapes and sizes available.  The kit includes the bricks, steel fire ring, 5 tubes of landscaping adhesive and 5 bags of pea gravel.  The 25 bags of 3/4" drainage gravel were not included and cost ~$125.

You'll also need a good shovel, a wheelbarrow, a caulk gun, and some decent gloves.  I also used a tamper, a steel-tined garden rake, and a hoe (insert Wes's Mom joke here), but these tools aren't strictly necessary.


-b0b
(...exhausting, but totally worth it!)

The Garage.

The never-ending project.

I've been working on remodeling our garage off and on for about six years now, and I'm finally in the home stretch.  When we bought the house, the garage was nearly useless.  It had absolutely no shelving or storage space and the walls were open studs. 

The garage had one light fixture (for a dark 24x24' garage), two receptacles, and knob-and-tube wiring that was likely installed in the late 30s or early 40s.  Knob-and-tube is pretty scary, so I ripped all of that out and replaced it with modern Romex wiring.  I also replaced the fuse box with a modern breaker box.  I also installed twelve receptacles, a dimming switch, four light fixtures (really should have gone with eight or more), twelve Cat5 Ethernet drops, six audio speaker drops, and installed a network rack.  Some old pictures of previous work can be found here:  http://www.twncommunications.net/Forum/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1339711069/12#1...

Two years ago, I started insulating the garage walls with fiberglass.  I have nurtured an intense hatred for fiberglass, and would use denim (or pay someone to spray in foam insulation) for future insulation projects. 



Here you can see the cutout that I left for my network rack, along with the Cat5 Ethernet cable ready to be seated and crimped.  I've drawn on the insulation with permanent marker to indicate where the wiring is located, with each wire labeled S for speaker, N for network, or P for power.  The power cabling is separated from the speaker and network cable as much as possible to reduce EMI.



Last year, I finally began finishing the walls by covering them with 3/4" sanded plywood.  It's a bit intense for a garage, but I wanted something that would last longer than I will.  Before putting the walls up, I tacked on metal wire protector plates so that I don't inadvertently put a screw through a wire down the road.


I used 4" stainless steel deck screws to hold the plywood in place, so each sheet is incredibly sturdy.  This section has additional electrical receptacles to accommodate my forthcoming workbench.



I finished hanging the majority of the plywood earlier this year, so I was finally able to get to a long-awaited milestone - shelving!  The garage had no shelving originally and I'd only purchased a single stand-alone shelf, so as you can see, stuff is all over the floor.  This made it a pain to do anything in the garage.  In this picture, I had nearly finished hanging the first section of shelving.



Here's a shot of the mostly-finished shelf after loading it up with the first batch of stuff.  I used three full-length 8' shelving sections on the bottom and ended up with four 4' sections on the top two rows (three shown here).  This is the Rubbermaid Tough Stuff shelving.  Each section can be moved independently and you can buy different shelf lengths (4' and 8') and depths (16" and 20"), so you can build exactly the kind of shelving you're looking for.  The big black box on the wall is my network rack.



Here's the opposing wall, showing the second section of shelving.  I figured 68 linear feet of shelving would be way more than sufficient, but I'm already thinking about adding another section of shelves next year.  Hopefully, the completion of my workbench will help eliminate some of the clutter!



Here's one final shot showing the current layout.  I added some additional rear rails and shelf brackets to accommodate areas where shelves ended more than 12" from a wall stud (and an existing rail/brace), as the shelf ends tended to be a bit floppy without them.


I really enjoyed putting the shelving together and it has vastly improved the appearance and usability of the garage.  I liked it so much that I'm considering doing the same thing in our basement to eliminate the ugly plastic free-standing shelving.


-b0b
(...always needs more garage space.)