I shared my colorful brick backyard fire pit the other week but it wasn’t yet complete because it needed some seating! And I had the perfect solution. Just right up the hill from the pit, a tree had been cut down, probably some time last year, and was already in perfectly sized stumps for some stools!
I thought it would be fun to make the whole area more of a hangout location and fixture of the yard by adding some special permanent seating. So, even though I anticipate also bringing out our more comfortable camp folding chairs, these stools are a great solution for the every day and times we decide to have a quick fire without all the set up work!
These stumps were actually a really easy project even though I wasn’t totally sure how they’d all go before I started! Mainly I knew I wanted to take the colored top down the sides a ways and I wasn’t very confident that it’d be easy with all that thick bark. But it was!
It wasn’t very easy on my brushes though haha. Luckily, I just used cheap sponge brushes so there was really no harm in going through a couple per stool. I used matching colors to my firepit and I love them although I can image so many more color possibilities that would also look good out there!
Because I didn’t want to worry about mowing/weed-wacking around the stumps or getting annoyingly high grass growing around them and the pit, I decided to clear out the sod in about a 3 foot circle around the bricks. Ok, tearing up sod has got to be the most physically strenuous work I have ever done! It was exhausting!
After I finally got that all up, I covered the ground with a weed blanket thing (available in the garden section–NEVER use weed/grass killer!! It is so bad on the environment and not to mention probably made by the most evil company in the world monsanto) and then laid down a layer of pea size gravel. Unfortunately Stella saw that whole laying and spreading process go down so she always thought the gravel was for playing/throwing haha. I think the girl needs a sandbox, which my mom has been telling me for a while…
Despite the hard work (of tearing up the grass, not the stools themselves), I love how the area turned out. It’s so fun to have a fire pit (I’ve never had one at my house!), especially because I’m pretty sure toasted marshmallows are in my top 5 favorite treats ever mmm!
I also think this seating would look cute on a patio area or throughout a garden! If you really trusted the stumps, you could even bring them indoors and use the same technique to create cute side tables! See this project in your future? Head over to ehow.com to see how I made them!
So fun! It looks amazing! :)