Building an Outdoor Fireplace

Small DIY Fireplace

We’re lucky enough to have a good sized backyard for a suburban block on the Gold Coast, 10 minutes to the beach. This means we have space to add in some of the things that we love. We have always wanted an outdoor fireplace or pizza oven. Both of these options were fairly expensive. Pinterest didn’t help either with all the beautiful big fireplaces I found on there!!!

This is not a sponsored post just what we have done in our own backyard. After doing some research I came across a company called Buschbeck Outdoor Fireplaces. This is the one we chose and lucky for us it had been reduced by $500. We purchased two accessories, the pizza oven insert and the cover. We chose this particular one for two reason. One it was on sale. Two, it was grey and we were making over our backyard with grey and white as the chosen colours.

The fireplace was delivered in several pieces. They also included the mortar to complete the build. After delivery we noticed the metal trim around the bench area had been damaged in transit. As a result we chose to take a $120 refund rather than wait for a replacement one. It hasn’t really worried us as things get a little worn after time anyway. A granite bench might hold up better than the metal trim.

We completely underestimated how heavy it would be. The total weight was around 600kg. Naively, we thought the individual pieces would be more manageable!! We had to call in extra manpower to get the pieces out to the backyard.

The construction process

The outdoor fireplace construction was pretty straight forward and a step by step process.

• The first step was to make a solid paved base for the fireplace to sit on;
• The fireplace had its own base which we placed in the centre of the paved area;
• They give you the option to use mortar for all of the joins. However, you definitely need to use the mortar for the chimney pieces. We used the mortar for all of the joins and had enough to do this with the mortar they provided.
• The grey semi open faced timber storage piece was next.
• Then the large shelf.
• The full open faced grey section was placed on top of that.
• There are several internal pieces that need to be inserted inside this piece before attaching the next section because you cannot do it once the top piece goes on.
• The heaviest piece was next. The large cream piece.
• After that it was the chimney pieces which were fairly light and easy to get in to position. This is the section you must use the mortar for.

Finishing Touches to our outdoor fireplace

Once completed I felt that some pieces sat up a bit too high and there were a few gaps. You can see this in the above picture where I prepared the area with the blue tape. I mixed up some mortar and filled in the gaps and it worked a treat.

We were really happy with the finished product. I still have some more work to do on the whole area so will do a reveal of that later.