Cosco Outdoor Fire Pit Table, Brown Mixed Media Frame

We are very happy with the comfy chairs and lovely fire. Recently, it is too hot to sit outside and enjoy it but we are looking forward to fall.

The set comes in two separate boxes, one box being the firepit and the other box being the two sling chairs, unassembled. Both boxes are heavy; a strong man can handle each alone, but it might be good idea for a two-person lift. They are packed very well, with tons of paper and foam and cardboard and straps and plastic coverings…lots of packing material to recycle.Assembly: The two chairs both took about 90 minutes to assemble. Each chair only has four constituent parts, but it’s not directly intuitive how they fit together, and the different elements use different-sized bolts, so you need to follow the directions. The directions were good, the drawings specific and exact. Naturally, the second chair goes a lot faster than the first.The firepit took about two full hours to assemble. Like the chairs, it is not that difficult, just a bit unwieldy to get the first few constituent parts into place and then thread the bolts to bring them together. It’s relatively intuitive to assemble, and the instructions and diagrams are thankfully very well done, very clear, very specific, and the English is very good—no bad/unintelligible Chinglish going on here.You only need one tool, a single allen wrench, and it is supplied both with the firepit and the chair hardware sets, so you’ll end up with two to add to your collection. All assembly is done with bolts, some of differing lengths, a standard washer, and a plastic cap for the bolt head. All of the hardware comes on a shrink-wrapped cardboard card, with everything very clearly labeled. Nice.The receiving nuts for the bolts are welded into holes in the items’ metal frames. While I did not experience any problems with alignment of the parts and the bolts, in a number of instances, especially with the chairs, the welding flux had not been ground down flush with the component, so there was no way to get a true flat connection between the components. There was no play in the welded nuts once I got things bolted together, tightly, but the absence of the flat grinding is somewhat disappointing, given the price of the set, and is noticeable if you’re examining the product closely.I noted some damage to one of the corners of the top of the firepit (see photo). It’s never clear for us Vine reviewers if we are shipped the factory seconds, or if we’re getting the same thing as all other customers. This damage to this corner of the firepit is entirely cosmetic, but it also affected the finish and produced a sharp metal burr at the corner, which I had to file down. This seems to indicate some lackadaisical quality control, as I would think that this kind of damage would be easy to fix in the factory.Once fully assembled, the chairs are light and easy to move. The firepit is heavier, but is not that difficult to move. Again, a two-person lift is the best way to go. It’s best to move and place your firepit where you want it, and then install the propane tank inside it, as a full propane take secured inside is going to double the weight of this item. (The propane tank does not come with the set.)The propane tank sits well inside the firepit box, with the frame keeping the tank off the ground, and with two thumb wheels to lock the bottom of the tank in position. The snake and the valve are all pre-assembled; there is no work to do here. Just screw it onto your propane tank and it’s ready to go.As touted in the product copy, the color scheme of the set is very good, the dark brown and tan accents fitting in very well on my desk (see photo).The supplied lava rocks for the burner bed aren’t plentiful enough to make this item look right. As you can see from the photos, the lava rocks do not fully cover the burner ring, not even close, so what you are getting is essentially individual jets of flame from each of the burner ring holes. The light and heat are there, but you don’t quite get that neato-cool dancing flame ambient effect as the gas suffuses up through the lava rocks. Another bag of easily obtainable and cheap lava rocks (the GrillPro 7-pound bag, purchased here on Amazon) fixed the problem of the flame, but left the little flame tray cover stranded high and dry.With the meager lava rocks provided, the flame tray cover fits perfectly into its recessed spot, to form a nice flush tabletop for the firepit, if you’re not using it for flame. So, Cosco needs to provide more lava rocks, and they need to either re-design the flame tray to fit more rocks, or re-design the dray cover to make it a dome or some such so that you can still use it with the right amount of lava rocks in the flame tray.Operation: if you’ve got a propane grill, you know how to operate this firepit. The hardware comes with a AAA battery to install into the igniter, and it installs quickly and easily. Turn on the gas, hold the control in the “light” position, hit the igniter, and mine went off immediately and on the first try. Piece of cake.On my deck the set looks good, and there is both good light and some limited warmth from the firepit. The top of the table remains largely cool to the touch, but I wouldn’t set anything delicate on it while the firepit is lit. The chairs are comfy and easy to move. They are a bit low to the deck, but easy enough to get in and out of. They do not adjust in any way.Documentation: I note that on the product online page, there is a hyperlink to customer service. The assembly instructions, in English, French, and Spanish, also provide usage information for the firepit. There is a 1-800 customer service number and a Cosco Outdoor URL on the first page. The part list is fully annotated, so if something is missing you can directly cite the part number; this is cross-referenced with the exact model number—this is the Cosco Outdoor Living Model 88-651SBTE!Price: At approximately $440, it seems to me to be somewhat overpriced. I see other sets—without chairs, mind you—coming in at half or even a third of this price. And no, the chairs in this set are nice but are not $100 chairs. I’m not seeing a huge amount of precision in the component parts (described above), plain to observe from assembling the three pieces. I just don’t see more than $400 worth of value in this. Somewhere in the $300-$350 range, that seems to make more sense to me. Or, Cosco can improve its product copy to make it more clear why this set is priced at this point.Bottom Line: This set is a nice firepit+chairs set. The workmanship gets the job done, but could be better, and I note some questionable quality control and minor supply and design flaws. The set seems somewhat overpriced, so I recommend you comparison-shop before you purchase.