Boring Backyard into a Fantastic Outdoor Entertaining Space

This post was created in collaboration with HomeRight, and may contain affiliate links. All thoughts, opinions and love of fire are my own. You can read my full disclosure here.

Today is the big day! I'm so excited to finally reveal our outdoor entertaining area and fire pit! This project has been a long time coming, and now that it's all finished, I can't wait for cooler evenings so we can really enjoy it even more. 

Let's jump right in with a couple of quick before shots, shall we? Due to most of our backyard being on massive hill, we really didn't use it all that much, but the potential was there. We added hillside garden boxes to make some use of the hill, but this spot right off the patio was where we needed to take advantage of the little bit of flat space we had.

Once we had the general area mapped out and killed all the grass, we discussed our material options, and decided we wanted to go as simple as possible, and give the space some character with some rustic and industrial touches. We rounded up some free railroad ties to edge the area, and then filled it in with a little over a ton of rock. BTW, you are welcome, for sparing you the sweaty, gross pics of us moving all that rock!

(Quick tip: If you need a lot of rock for a project like this, contact your local concrete company for rock prices. We paid a little over $40 for all our rock!)

Now, on to the reveal!!!
Like I said we wanted to keep the space as simple as possible, so we stole the stackable chairs from the deck, picked up a couple of clearance side tables from Target to hold drinks and snacks, added a few flowers to add a little color, and of course picked out this fantastically huge fire pit from a local metal design shop!

We wanted to keep the fire pit front and center in the entertaining area so everyone could take advantage of the view, and it keeps the fire farther from the house too. We decided to go big or go home on this fire pit; it is 37" across and every bit of 2 feet tall! I wanted something big to make a dramatic impact, and this totally does the job!

The one last thing we needed with the fire pit was something to start the fire with, and this HomeRight ElectroLight fire starter is absolutely awesome! It gets a fire started super quick with nothing more than air, and I think it's fun to use too! 

So this fancy little thing is something that I didn't even know I needed, but now, I don't want to be without it! It uses super high temperature air (1300 degrees!) to ignite the wood and then fans the flames to really get the fire going, and within a couple of minutes you have a perfect fire started in your fire pit. (We have also used this with our BBQ grill, and had the charcoal going in no time flat!) And, if your fire starts to go out, simply use the ElectroLight to fan the flames and get your fire back up and going again.

I'm so excited to have this new outdoor space to entertain, and just relax after a long day! There's nothing quite as relaxing a sitting outside around a fire on a clear night. And knowing that we didn't break the bank to create new outdoor space, makes the space that much sweeter!

Ready to makeover your boring backyard? Save it now, and come back to it later!