What have we been up to you ask? Well, doing life, having parties, and being crafty! Oh and lots of prep for Camp Victory's Camp Store. Lisa has run this store for the last few years and and Laura and I kind of "own" it through osmosis...or maybe its the hours and hours of help we get wrangled into each year. See Lisa's upcoming blog post...though this may be in retrospective...say in September...She is one busy girl!
My ongoing theme this spring has been "patio prep". I have dreamed of making the lovely concrete slab out side of our house into a cozy patio where my roommates and I could enjoy our friends, our morning coffee, and the brief summer MN has to offer.
Bonfires are a quintessential part of summer in MN. While my roommates hate the smell of bonfires, we all enjoy smores, and the laughter and chats that often take place around a fire. (Can you tell we are all camp counselors at heart?) Patio fire pits can be expensive (not to mention forbidden by our landlord), and we are thrifty so I started searching Craigslist for low cost fire bowls. I found a $15 dollar fire bowl with a cracked mosaic around the rim.I jumped at the chance. " I can fix one crack! Grout and I are on good speaking terms." This was my rationalization. So, I borrowed a truck and trekked out the outreaches of a wealthy Minneapolis suburb to pick up the fire bowl. In the pouring rain. When I arrived, I found that there was not 1 crack but several and half the mosaic had fallen off as the previous owners had moved it from the front to the back yard. OK. So this was going to be a bit more work.
Once I got the fire bowl home, the first thing I did was remove the remaining mosaic from around the rim of the fire bowl. To remove the mosaic I simply broke the remaining pieces off with the hammer. I good hard smack to tile will shatter it. .
I was particularly careful not to twist the wire mesh layer underneath the mosaic. This wire mesh layer is what the new grout will adhere to. It helps to try to let the vibrations from the hammer shake loose the dust and old grout from underneath the wire mesh. Not all of it will come out, and that is OK, the cement/grout be strong as long as most of it has something to adhere to.
I sprayed the whole thing down with the hose at high pressure to get all the dust off and let it dry as I organized the rest of my supplies. I purchased a case of tile samples from a coworker a couple of years ago and it provided me the tile portion of my fire pit redo. Tile can be found at any local tile shop. If you don't want to pay full price, call a few weeks in advance and see if floor samples or other inventory samples will be thrown out or discontinued. It maybe a hodge podge, but it could also be a great conversation piece! Also, I am not an expert about what type of tiles can be used with what type of heat. I used porcelain. We have small fires as it is a fire bowl and not a fire pit, and the tiles seem to hold up well.
After taking stock of my supplies I was completely stumped as to how I wanted to organize the design of the tiles. The only problem with samples is that there is one or two of EVERYTHING and the colors do not always look the best together. I decided to start with the small vertical lip that ran around fire bowl. I put together smaller strings of colors I liked, and then would find a way to transition between them.
Once this was done I used the outside ring to inform the larger color blocks around the flat part of the mosaic. I moved the whole thing onto two cardboard boxes and laid out the tiles around the fire pit.
Next, I set about mixing my "grout". In reality it is high heat concrete - type S specifically.
I have to thank my local home depot for help with this one. I know they are a mega chain and all that, but they are seriously awesome! I called into the store at 4pm to ask a question about the possibility of some sort of "high heat" grout. Super Helpful Home Depot Guy Paul said he would look into it and call me back. Who knew they did that? Well, Good ole' Paul called me back an hour later and gave me the 411 on this concrete mix (its holding up beautifully by the way) by 5:15 that day!.Oh, and did I mention the entire 40lb bag cost me $4?? Granted I now have about 36lbs of type S concrete I have NO idea what I'm going to do with, but I'll come up with something I'm sure. :)
Now for the fun part. Grouting and placing the tile. I suppose professionals would use spacers and other "official things". I used a trowel and my fingers. Essentially, I plopped some grout down on the lip of the fire pit and snugged in the first little tile - getting a good suction established. I placed the next too it in the same manner, keeping roughly the same space between each tile. I moved the tile around until the grout became compact between the two little tiles and acted as a spacer in and of itself. It doesn't have to look pretty at this stage. It just needs to be kind of secure..
I worked in this manner around the fire pit until I had a whole section secure - I would then take a wet paper towel and wipe down the tiles a bit. You are effectively sculpting the tile and cement together into a unified whole and you can better see if there are uneven spots by wiping down the tile now. This also help later with clean up.
Once the last pieces have been snugged into place, take a paper towel and wipe down a final time taking care not to disturb the tiles. Let this dry for 2 days prior to use. It maybe advised to seal the cement. I haven't and its holding up quite well.
My fire bowl was really rusty and it looked rough. I stumbled upon a high heat Rustoleum spray paint that was meant for engines and grills in the spray paint section while shopping for another project. The can said it was good up to 5000 degrees. Excellent. I sprayed the bowl, cover grate and legs with this spray paint. I left the cooking grate as is, just in case we do cook on it.
Turned out pretty cute!
