Repour it or use a self leveling overlay.

Repouring it would be a nightmare and a leveling overlay would be difficult since there is a sidewalk on one end and steps on another.

I know I've tweaked things in the past with landscaping etc. to improve the look of things w/o going to such drastic measures. I was hoping to get some guidelines from experts regarding how to "balance" out the area visually.

you just did ,

you just did.

Does anyone have any other ideas besides the 2 aforementioned?

jackhammer it. You're asking for magic and we're all Muggles.

I'd make the top of the firepit level and try to find/build planters to place on the lower patio end. Semi circle planters on the outer rim of the circular patio or curved raised seating out of the stackable cast stone might help IMO.

I think if you put the top of the fire pit in at a slope, it will just make it more noticeable, even though the difference between the patio surface and the fire out surface will be less, your eyes will be drawn up and you will still be able to tell it is sloped. I think the level fire pit top and level planters or benches will draw the eye up and you will rest on these level surfaces.

Our house had a fire pit on a slope also and that is what I thought about the surrounding area. The fire pit top was level and with a level swinging bench behind it, the sloped ground seemed less pronounced. We ended up removing the fire pit mostly because it was too close to the house but I understand how disturbing it must have been to realize this after the fact.

Best of luck to you!

Trovesoftrilliums, thanks for the constructive suggestions. Sorry you had to contend with this issue once upon a time. I figured, I couldn't have been the only one with this issue and I can learn from what others have done to "fix" things.

My DH is going tomorrow to pick up the firepit stones. I'll share with him your experiences and what seemed to work the best for you. It's seems like it could only help to lay it level. I like your idea a lot with putting raised seating at the edges.

I'm thinking and hoping with "distractions" this will soften it substantially. It's like a empty room, you'll see EVERYTHING that isn't just right.

Thanks a lot for your experience and insights.

Leveling out the firepit wall is not going to help solve the problem.

Where does the walk tie in? At the high or low side or at the center? If I'm interpreting your information correctly, it sounds like you have about 12" of fall across a 15' circle, when you really need only 2 or 3", which is a 9" difference. This is enough of a difference that it's going to be difficult (impossible) to fix with camouflage as it will be too much slope for furniture. A possible fix depends on how the grade is configured AROUND the patio and we don't have that information. A photo would help a lot. I'm thinking that a possible easiest way out is to reface the upper surface of the patio at a correct level, which probably means pouring some concrete on top of the low side of the slab in order to "level it out". You say the walk is an impediment to doing this. Depending on what point the adjoining walk interfaces with the slab, I would consider breaking it out far enough back that it can be re-poured to a usable pitch and a correct join. If the patio is to be a concrete surface, then you would need to add height to the whole slab as you'd need to cover the upper end with 1 1/2" of concrete as well. You'd have the option of getting the low side to the correct height and then facing the entire patio surface with thin brick pavers, mortared in, or the like. By building on top it saves you demolition mess and costs, but whether it can be done depends on grade information yet unknown.

Another possibility is building over the entire patio with regular concrete pavers on a granular base, in which case you would use the base to do the leveling. It would require your raising the upper end about 2.5" at least in order to accommodate the pavers. And you would need to add soil around the lower end of the patio in order to hold the paver retainer.

3/4"-7/8" per foot across a 15' patio is a whole foot. Why not demo the patio, reconstruct it with two steps down to the walk? You'll find that the visual impact will be the least of your problems if you continue to use this as a patio.

I am feeling ill about all this :(

My DH bought the stones and is trying lay them in there but because we have to lay them on the patio for stability, there is no simple way to even out the top.

I've compiled a letter to the contractor to see how truly reputable they are. There are no cracks in the area, so the patio still is the way it was when it was finished. I noticed the excessive pitch right away but we mismeasured and thought the pitch was 3/8" not 3/4". With the land around it, I thought it was ann optical illusion.

The "easiest" solution to get it right would be to rip out the 15' patio AND the two 8' wide steps on the lower end.

Shouldn't checking for correct pitch, angles and sloping be the responsibility of the contractor and not the homeowner? When I saw it framed out, it "looked" correct. We checked a few of the pitches but not EVERYTHING obviously.

I try to be flexible and overlook reasonable mistakes but obviously this mistake is too big. The consensus here in this thread among professionals it is bad enough to rip out and start over again. What type of fix/compensation from the contractor should I expect?

Laag, being that this patio is a distance from my house, what other potential issues could we have?

It sounds like this wasn't drawn up with plans or specs which indicated what the proper slope gradients should be. When the formwork was placed, it would have been obvious to most people that a foot drop across a 15 foot area intended to be a patio with firepit was too steep. If there weren't actual plans and grades indicated, the responsibility for this goof is yours, not the contractor's, as he would have expected you to alert him of any problems before the concrete was to be poured. Unfortunate that you couldn't seem to visualize the slope after it was formed out, but if there weren't plans and specifications/notes regarding maximum slopes to be permitted, it sounds like the responsibility to catch this was yours. Go back and look at your plans and contract if you have one. If this is per the plans or there weren't errors in installation/failure to follow specs, why should you expect the contractor to compensate you?

The idea was to save money by designing it yourself and hiring a contractor to build it for you. What comes with that is owning the mistakes that you made. There is no designer or project manager for you to hold accountable because you believed that you did not need one.

Anyone can say "let's put a 15' patio here and connect a couple of walks over there. That's the easy part. Getting a contractor to pour concrete where you tell them you want it is not too difficult either. Your mistake was to think that the project was more simple than it was and/or the contractor would automatically make sure that the outcome was everything you thought it would be.

Project managing designers are paid to take on the responsibilities of first knowing how to make it work in the design and secondly to ensure that the project is executed to plan. That is what you would have been paying for.

Your contractor charged you to build to your plans. It is unlikely that he contracted to fix your mistakes as he went along.

You confessed that it was your mistake "we mismeasured and thought the pitch was 3/8" and now you want someone else to be responsible for it. You gambled the amount of money it would take to hire a good designer and a project manager against your ability to design the project and manage it. You lost. It is that simple.

Of course leveling the fire pit top does not solve the slope of the patio. Just some thoughts on visually minimalizing the slope as OP asked.

Could you mud jack the low end of the patio?

Is there anything else about the lay out that you do not like? If there were other issues (for example, you realize now that it should have been longer/shorter or whatever) then I would consider repouring. If it is just the slope... I'd try to live with it and see how it impacted the functionality if the area. It may be something you simply don't want to live with though, which I definitely understand.

Good luck!

Before you work yourself up into an ulcer over this, some food for thought:
- between patio and steps, it sounds like you're looking at - from what you've posted this is a large project. I have to think the redo will be a small percentage of the overall project cost. Crap happens, that's life when you GC a project (especially as an amateur)

- what's better? To pay a little more and get it done right, or to let it ride and listen to the cursing every time Uncle Morty sets his Cuban down and it rolls into the lake?

It always sucks to make a mistake, but this sounds like a relatively small one. Just breathe.

Trovesoftrilliums, I'm glad you mentioned the idea of the mudjacking because I too was thinking it night be a possibility. Thank you also for answering my initial question.

It's hard to take the other negative comments, since overall we've been generally happy with how it all turned out and ESPECIALLY the design. It functions like a dream and we get a LOT of positive comments on how it all turned out. Though it's physically a lot of concrete, it doesn't seem that way that way at all aesthetics wise. We're also getting some steps put in which is extremely difficult with all the variables at hand. We even thought would we have done anything differently with the design and it's an empathnic NO.

To not be able trust a contractor to perform up to minimum industry standards is ludicrious! I read about problems all the time in the kitchen forum of contractors botching things up that are CLEARLY laid out. I see architects renderings that have functioning problems. Lay people hire these individuals and their "expertise" to thwart these problems, not to create them. If I had changed my mind after the fact about something in the design that I designed, THAT would be my mistake. Not performing to a minimum industry standard is the contractor responsibility. If those of you that think I'm responsible, I seriously doubt you check EVER angle and pitch especially when doing such a large job. The one doing the work should be held accountable to do this as they build.

"The one doing the work should be held accountable to do this as they build. "

The ones doing the work can only be held accountable to the specifications they were given. When I have a contractor pour a patio for me, I tell him what my desired pitch is, where the high point should be, and where the break point should be. After the forms are in but before the concrete truck arrives, I set up the transit and check spot grades around the perimeter and have his guys correct anything too low or too high. If I leave it to someone else to guess and they guess wrong, it's on me.

I've seen your project in your other posts. It's not a large job. So yes, any good GC or project manager would have checked those details.

You said the patio's not cracking and it's where you wanted it. That's minimum industry standards.