Outdoor Fire Pit and Patio

Backyard Patio with Fire Pit and Sitting Wall

Outdoor living has become an increasingly popular topic for many homeowners looking to expand and upgrade their yards. One of the most popular projects in the outdoor living arena is an outdoor fire pit and patio. An outdoor fire pit can create a central gathering place for social events including cookouts, cocktail parties or a quiet summer evening with family and friends.

In this article I’ll show you how this backyard patio and fire pit were built and some of the design considerations you might want to think about with a similar project. This patio and fire pit are part of a long term backyard renovation project that will include a covered pavilion and hopefully a pool.

Options Are Only Limited by Imagination

The design possibilities for backyard patios, fire pits and landscaping are endless. For our fire pit and patio we started by doing a search online and in magazines. I was stunned at the options and creativity that are available to give inspiration for amazing outdoor living areas. Some great resources for starting your search are Pinterest, Google Image Search, Houzz and home and garden magazines.

Our backyard living space project was inspired by several ideas. The fire pit started from an imagine on Google and it evolved to include the sitting wall area from a magazine that our landscaper showed us. I used each of these ideas to come up with a preliminary plan for our project before working out final details and pricing with the landscaper. I highly recommend gathering several ideas and concepts that you like before diving head first into a project like this.

Planning A Backyard Patio and Fire Pit

Planning is key to any project especially larger more expensive ones. The more planning you do ahead of time the more successful and rewarding the final product. There are lots of great tools to help with planning this type of project. You can do simple hand sketches, you can hire a landscape architect or you can do some more advanced planning with free tools like Sketchup. Sketchup is a free 3D drawing tool that’s wonderful for doing renderings and light drafting projects.