DIY - Fire Pit - Doing the "Rock Work"

[Music] [Music] welcome guys this is jeff from the watkins tree farm how are you i hope you're doing well and thank you for tuning in today today we will be doing part two of the fire pit build and i'm super excited about it i've been excited to do this project since the beginning of this channel so today we will be hitting rocks out of the flower bed area and the front tree area and then we'll be arranging the rocks and then we'll do the rocks and layers i'm not going to pretend i'm a professional this is all new for me and i'm going to take you guys along before i do that i want to say thank you to all my subscribers and thank you for subscribing the channel and it's much appreciated and for those of you that this is your first time visiting the channel i say welcome this is the watkins tree farm i started a christmas tree farm this year and i'm documenting everything we go through and along with the christmas trees i also doing the projects around the house and i hope i earn your subscription and you guys can subscribe to the channel uh every subscription helps to try to get this thing uh up and going youtube tells me i need a thousand subscribers and four thousand hours before this can be more of a profit kind of deal but anyway enough about that thank you guys for subscribing and let's get started on part two this fire pit [Music] so [Music] so we got the rocks gathered which wasn't the funnest part of this whole build but we got the rocks gathered and we're going to be ready to lay out our first layer for the fire pit and then we'll build on from there [Music] well today is a beautiful day finally the weather has either been really hot and humid or as of lately it's been really really wet today is the first beautiful day and it sounds like this weekend and next week supposed to be uh very mild in the 70s and the 80s for july and august and kansas very very unusual but i'm going to take advantage of it and we're going to start doing the mortar on this first course mix the mortar up and start doing this and we'll learn together i don't think i mentioned before but i'm using type s mortar to do this so just take note [Music] i'm going to try to put the mortar on the foundation this is the foundation that we poured a few weeks ago part one of this fire pit video i'm not going to pretend i'm an expert but i'm not afraid to give it a shot [Music] so [Music] well i did the first bucket of mortar and it went fairly smooth um i'm sure as i go i'll figure more things out but these stone are so irregular it's kind of hard to get the mortar evenly so there's kind of a water spot where they've been over a couple days and so i'm putting mortar in those spots and then just slowly working it down so we'll go through this second bucket and see how it goes [Music] so going through this first course one thing that i have learned is working with these uh seams these joints at first i thought it was a little intimidating but if you just put the a big glob of mortar up there at the top and then just keep pushing it down it'll eventually fill that crack now i don't have the correct equipment but i get my hand in there and smooth it out but that seems to work the best since these stones are so irregular these joints tend to be difficult as i'm sitting here working i'm just thinking if i were to leave any gaps i could have critters mice i don't know what else living back behind this now granted the first time we fire up the fire pit we'll smoke them out and probably roast them but up into that it could probably be a mess so that's what i've learned on these joints so we got to the end and we were a little short so we had to go get another stone i like this stone because of the link but there's a big gap and so i had my son joshua go find me a rock and we're going to stick that rock in there and mortar that part of it so that's what we're going to do right now [Music] well we're ready for the second course got the rocks laid out got the mortar mixed up we're gonna get this going [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do we are finished with the rock work on the fire pit that is awesome what'd you guys think of that airplane flying over the k-state celina flight school does a lot of their training above our house you can hear them do stalls and stuff like that but today was probably the closest they got but i thought i'd share that with you guys uh tips and tricks on this build that i learned i think there's a couple things that i can pass on to you guys one thing especially here in kansas in the summer it gets hot i'd keep your batch sizes small on your mortar so i used a five gallon bucket and as you can see in the video i i remixed and mixed again and remixed and sometimes it dried out and i'd have to add water the other tip would be if you noticed i didn't use gloves and if you don't want your hands to dry out or get really tight i would i would recommend gloves i laid out the rocks before each row i did and that helped us kind of get a game plan on uh how i wanted the rocks to lay out and fit together so that helped a lot probably saved a lot of time another thing would be if you have a big a big gap like i did in a couple places a person could uh fill that with mortar but like i did a couple times was i went and got a rock and filled the void with most that rock and then i mortared it so i think that would help you too the only other thing i recommend is don't be afraid to try something new i have done a little rock work helping people out but this is the biggest project that i've been a part of and done so tell me what you guys think below on this project on the rock work that we're doing here for this fire pit i'd like to say i'm finished with the fire pit but we want to do a cap over the top of the rock work and my wife's mentioned like a mosaic of little rocks and so i have to sit down and kind of figure out how i'm going to do that but that's another day and i thank you guys for tuning in to this uh this build and if i earn your uh subscription please subscribe if you uh like this video hit the like button as well thank you guys you have a great day god bless and i'll see you on the next video bye you

Channel: Watkins Tree Farm

Views: 5,729

Keywords: Watkins Tree Farm, Country life, Country Living, how to build a fire pit, how to build a fire pit in your backyard, how to build a fire pit using natural stone, diy fire pit, how to mortar a fire pit, how to mortar stone, rock fire pit, natural rock fire pit, rock work, outdoor fire pit

Id: 1jeundxVVko

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020