Deconstruction

 

We've been wanting to get rid of our firepit area for many years now but for various reasons, it hasn't been near the top of our list. It was here when we bought the house and looked about how it looks like now with weeds growing up in the cracks of the pavers and the fire ring itself a crumbled broken mess. We occasionally used it over the years and I would like to have another one perhaps someday. However, the next one might be one of those portable ones where I can empty the ashes afterwards and store someplace or perhaps I might build another one someplace else. The current one dictated the width of our garden which had to fit between the fire pit and the greenhouse.

Awhile back I decided to remove the fence from around our garden to mow the edges and empty spots in our garden and in the process of doing that, I somehow forgot about the firepit and mowed right over it. In my defense, it was covered in weeds and grass clippings at the time. Only when the spinning blade caught the cement fire ring did I remember it. Fortunately, one lawn mower blade had a fairly significant gouge in the sharpened edge and will need to be replaced but no serious damage was done. That became the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back and so on a recent cool morning, I grabbed a shovel and started pulling up blocks.

Above you can see the work in process (where I stopped when it got hot again) as I stacked the unbroken concrete pavers to be repurposed and piled up the edging and broken blocks. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with any of those things at that point.

Above shows it several days, and perhaps 50 wheelbarrow trips later. We are building a dedicated strawberry bed on the right side of our garden and I'm going to use the pavers as a semi-permanent walkway around the bed. The rest of the broken pavers and all the edging bricks, I hauled down to the woods behind the greenhouse where they are out of sight until a better use comes to mind. All the loads of gravel, weedy sod clumps and the ashes of hundreds of fires was also hauled down to the woods and out of sight and mind. Next up I need to get some replacement dirt for the firepit area and strawberry beds and seed the firepit area down in grass for now.