SPRING!!! and a new project Outdoor Fireplace Design Discuss SPRING!!! and a new project in the Outdoor Kitchens and Living Rooms forums; Gosh, you've been busy!!! It looks great, I love the river rock round the poles. And I'll bet it looks ...

[Frances]

Gosh, you've been busy!!!

It looks great, I love the river rock round the poles. And I'll bet it looks incredible at night time with all those fairy lights...

[egalecki]

Holy cow! It all looks great! I would never have thought to cover the posts with river jack. It adds a really nice touch. Even if it's taking a long time, it's worth it.

I'm sure I ought to know what the thing to the right of the grill is, but I'm having trouble figuring that out. Some sort of charcoal grill box with tile?

What kind of wine? My dad made some when I was a kid, using concord grapes, I think. I remember squashing the grapes in a plastic bag and then watching Daddy do mysterious things with it all winter, and then he pronounced it noxious, I believe... but this was years ago and I think he was doing the fermenting in a big plastic water container we used to use on the boat. Probably not the best choice of grapes, either...

[cvdukes]

Elizabeth,

The box to the left of the gas grill is a 3-burner propane cooktop...picked it off of Harborfreight for 20 bucks last year. It took me a couple days of figuring to think up how I could cover it with a tile cover when it wasn't in use. First I was going to just make something to lift off, but realize weight would be an issue...plus chance of dropping and breaking it. So, it has some pretty hefty hinges and was made of a couple layers of concrete backer board held together with fiberglas tape and thinset... its held in the open position by a copper rod suspended from the overhead arbor. I need to coat the inside of the lid with the white fiberglass concrete I use as stucco to make it look better when open...but far down the list of to-dos.

The wines were a muscadine, an apple, a pear, and unknown with a missing label (probably a different apple batch), a pinto palm, and pumpkin. Idea was to get some of my inventory cleaned out because I needed to free up some jugs...I sent the invite out as a "Jug Liberation Party"...but sadly no jugs were freed. Surprise favorite of the night was the pumpkin... I make a batch of it every year at Halloween (real problem is finding those really big italian women that can stomp the juice out of a pumpkin). You can only eat so much pumpkin pie!