Pizza Oven Part II - Stucco & Tile

With the metal lath in place, the next step was to apply two coats of mortar "scratch" coat.  We used a product where you weigh the cement powder, sand and measure the volume of water to make the paste mix and trowel it on.  The day was a warm one and things started setting up a bit quickly.  The colour coat was a "just-add-water" product which comes white but I added some "chamois" coloured powder to get the terra cota colour.  This coat went on very nicely and was a pleasure to use by comparison the the first ones.  The final step has been to use some of the left over house floor tiles to cover the original concrete slab.

Pizza Oven I

Once the suspended slab had cured we abused our friends Steve & Sam who innocently came over for dinner one night and found themselves helping us place the 490 lb. oven shell in position.  The next step was to jack up the oven (using the jack from our Triumph sports car) so the mortar could be applied on the insulating pad.  With the mortar in place, the oven was lowered into place and the chimney also mortared in.

The next phase was to place 3/8" of sand on the floor of the oven, then install the fire brick.  The three layers of insulation blanket were wrapped around the concrete casting and the whole thing held in place with aluminum lath and tie wire.  Stay tuned for part II - Stucco ...

Vegetable Garden

One of the items on the list for this spring has been getting some raised beds and deer fencing in place to start a vegetable garden.  The process began with having some Alder trees felled to let a bit more sunlight in.  Once that job was done (trees down in 40 minutes - clean-up of trunks and branches: 40 hours) we got some cheap 2 x 8 lumber and built some raised beds which were putdown over a blanket of corrugated cardboard.  The boxes were filled with combinations of composted chicken manure (from Seth and Mary-anne next door) leaf mulch and chipped branches.  The paths between the beds were then set with chips from the felled Alders.  The final process was building a deer proof fence which included three access gates (also made from the by products of the felled Alders and some leftover white-painted Cedar from house parts.  First sowing on June 20th.... now awaiting some sun!