Building the Entrance and Chimney, Part Two

Over the past few days, we've made some great progress. The walls are higher. The front arch is built, and the stone has been laid at the front entrance.  Tomorrow and over the next few days we will build the entrance and chimney, as well as keep raising the walls.

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here are some shots of the fun.

Once the wall was up to the correct height, it was time to pour some concrete to create a foundation for the stone.

Then the stone was laid.

Building the Entrance and Chimney, Part One

Today we did more work on the exterior brick facade as well as build the arch.  This arch looks cool, because it is the first arch made out of our red brick. It will also make our wood storage area look cool, and ultimately it will support help support the entrance to our oven.

Here are some shots:

We also further utilized child labor in building the corners.  First, there was the ceremonial writing of name (on the back of the brick).

Then it was time to get down to business.

A little more brick

It was a great Saturday morning. We had ten people out to help on the oven at various points in the day.  On task was the completion of the lower base of the oven's exterior.  We put down row after row of brick, and Mike suggested that we edge out some of our mortar to make the bricks pop and make our brick laying "sins" a little less noticeable.  We did that, and it looks pretty darn cool.

We mixed up the mortar in the wheelbarrow that a member found abandoned in the boulevard a few blocks East of the church.

Then we got some kiddos in on the action. (child labor laws do not apply to volunteer stuff, I think?)

Then before too long we had a wall.

The next step is to build the brick arch over where some firewood will be stored, and start building the entrance and chimney for the oven.

The Laying of Brick

This past Tuesday our brick arrived in the rain, all 1,500 of these little beauties.  Many thanks to Scott Olson at Olson Brick Sales and Tim Dougherty at Acme Brick for their help and support of this project. The bricks are beautiful and will give the oven the "old world" look that we were looking for.

We moved the bricks up to the worksite, and then the more skilled amongst us made all four corners level and square.

Then the newbies started laying the brick out from there.

 Before you knew it, we started to have actual rows of bricks and it started to look like a real brick oven.

 Not too shabby.  The hole that you see is where the wrought iron door to the ash chamber will go. The white clouds on the brick will also be power washed off when the oven is completed.