Wednesday, July 17, 2019

The Wood-Fired Pizza Oven Saga Part 4 - Tragedy Strikes!

There are two ways to move giant, heavy rocks:

The hard way.
The really, really, really hard way.

I haven't figured out the hard way yet so that leaves me the other option.

This may shock and surprise many of my closest friends and family members, but I am not a stone mason. I have no idea what I am doing as I build this oven. You can watch all the Youtube tutorials you want, but ultimately, you are faced with a sea of rocks strewn across your backyard that you have to muscle into place.

I am considering just leaving these as an environmental art installation. It will make mowing the back yard super exciting.

After spending a couple days placing the rocks for the base of the oven, I had a terrible realization.

The base layer is, as the name clearly implies, the base of the entire structure.

The front.

The back. Please note that Chicken is the job site supervisor.

Chicken does not approve.

Because, as noted earlier, I am not a stone mason, I realized that I had some aesthetic and structural flaws in my first attempt. The stones had been placed and the interior had been filled with crushed tiles, bricks, and cinderblocks as fill.

And it just wasn't working for me.

So, very reluctantly, with an aching heart and back, I pulled the entire thing apart.

This made me quite sad.

As a side note, that rock in the center weighs about as much as a dozen elephants. In tanks. Made of lead.

I shoveled out all the Urbanite that I had used as fill and began the slow, laborious process of replacing the rocks.

Did I mention that I am not a stone mason?

The New! Improved! Base 2.0.

 The base looks much better and seems more structurally sound, but I haven't shown it to Chicken yet, so I don't know if she approves.


1 comment:

Mom said...

You may want to get some help or advice from Karen/Doug and maybe Jim. Karen is the queen of rocks,(just don't look too closely at her crushed finger). Have you seen what they have done with their backyard!? Amazing. Pure sweat equity. She has a gift of putting together stone or other random pieces and getting them to fit perfectly like an Inca masterpiece! Ask mom to get a consult w Karen. She has her idiosyncrasies, like all of us, but can't deny the spatial she has for this kind of thing. Doug is a gem and the two make an unbeatable team. Jim is their rock supplier, but may have professional advice to impart on the project.