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I created this pretty recycled fire pit coffee table with solar light completely by accident but now it’s the highlight of our back patio.
Our youngest son was graduating from high school and we were having family over for a party afterwards.
Thanks to the pandemic, it had been awhile since we’d had company and our patio had gotten out of control.
There was not enough seating space outside for all our guests, not enough space for drinks or plates of food, and a pile of tools and clutter had built up in one corner.
We did have one table with four chairs and an umbrella on one side of the patio but I’d always wanted to put a sitting area on the other for hanging out at night with friends and family or even just as a relaxing spot for a cup of coffee in the morning.
I couldn’t spend a fortune – we had upcoming college expenses to think about – but I found an inexpensive rug I liked, four chairs, matching pillows and a little accent table at Home Depot.
I cleaned up the messy corner, pressure washed the concrete flooring and was so excited to put my new finds in place but when I did the space looked blah.
It wasn’t at all what I’d pictured in my mind – better than the disaster that was there before but not as homey or charming as I wanted.
My son came out to check my work when everything was in place and he agreed – something was missing.
We had one of those round, wrought iron, fire pit bowls with a dome screen over the top sitting by itself in the middle of our pool deck. He suggested I put that in the center of the new space with the chairs around it.
It was the only option I had at the moment and I’d been dying to find a way to repurpose it as we so rarely used it anyway.
I dragged it across the patio, sweating like a fiend in the summer sun, and hauled it into place but it was a rusted, dirty mess and it just looked horrible amongst all my new things.
Tired of the whole project, I decided I was done for the night and figured I’d try to come up with a better solution the next day.
I went inside, had to go into the garage to get something out of the freezer, and – much to my surprise – against the wall of the garage was a thick, round piece of glass that looked like it might be fit over the top of my fire pit!
I’d never seen it before and had no idea how it got there but I heaved it into the house to take a look.
It was covered top and bottom with thick, ugly water spots. We have really hard water here and heavy rain storms in the summer. This looked like it had been sitting outside and had not been cleaned in years.
I measured it to make sure it would fit over the fire pit if I removed the metal screen. The glass was 2 inches wider than the diameter of the pit which was perfect.
I pulled out my trusty bottle of water and vinegar and went to work.
It took some scrubbing both with sponges and microfiber cloths but I was able to remove all the spots and was left with a gorgeous piece of shiny glass with no dings or scratches.
Putting the glass over the fire pit instead of the yucky, rusted screen made all the difference.
Suddenly, the greenish, rusty patina of the fire pit looked intentional and rather elegant and the interior wood and ash seen through the glass looked like nature on display.
By this time it was dark outside and the patterned solar lights I’d just set up along the back edge of my pool were coming on.
I wondered if I could somehow use one of them with the new coffee table.
My challenge was that these were stake lights meant to be stuck into the ground. There was no way to just set it on the table by itself.
I happened to have a galvanized steel pot outside that I wasn’t using for anything at the moment. I filled the pot part way with large gravel from my yard, set the solar light inside and then put more gravel around the spike to hold the light in place.
I set the pot in the center of my new fire pit table and the wavy patterns of light looked like flames around the edges of the pit’s interior.
It was at that point that my husband came home and found me on the patio. He took one look at what I’d done and said, “Oh, you found my glass!”
Turned out that just a couple of weeks before he’d walked down our street to get the mail and one of the neighbors had put out some trash for our neighborhood’s monthly bulk pick up. One of the items sitting out was that round piece of glass.
He had no idea what he was going to do with it but he decided it was such a nice piece that he’d grab it and that was how it found our way into our garage.
It was meant to be!
Supplies
Because our patio is covered I do have to move the solar light from the table to a sunny spot in our yard each day that I want to use it but as I have a number of them already in the sun around my pool I can always swap the one I’ve set aside to use with my table for one of those that has been charging all day if needed.
You could also make one of these dazzling solar lanterns to use on the table instead.
On the day of the party the first thing my mother-in-law spotted was this DIY fire pit table and she thought it was wonderful but when the sun went down and I put the pot with the solar light on top she couldn’t stop commenting on how nice it looked.
Of course, I thought it was beautiful anyway but that little extra bit of confirmation didn’t hurt!
I’ve since used another of the lights to make a matching torch for my patio wall.