Elizabeth's oven

[egalecki]

Monsoon season seems to be over for now, so I'm going to pour the foundation on Monday, I think. My dh has come up with a plan for the block which uses fewer of them- combining them with lintels we already have left over from building something else. He is insisting on putting in rebar sticking out of the slab, though, to tie them in, so now I have to figure out placement. I'll take a picture of the autopad drawing of it after I do some measuring and then post it.


It's going so slowly-too many things, good and bad, keep getting in the way of my wonderful project. On the other hand, I haven't been dreaming about it or waking up from trying to calculate in my sleep.

I found a woodfired pizza restaurant over in Blacksburg- a friend says the owner apparently built it himself. I'll try to get pictures sometime- The owners are from Abruzzo, and the pizza is pretty good, but so is everything else they have! (PEI mussels with linguine, oh my...)

[gjbingham]

Oh yah! Cozze! If they have a pasta vongole, give it a try too. Lots of EVOO and herbs, huh?

[egalecki]

Originally Posted by gjbingham

Oh yah! Cozze! If they have a pasta vongole, give it a try too. Lots of EVOO and herbs, huh?

They have a red clam sauce, but it's really hard here to get the little tiny clams in the shells for vongole.

The cozze had lots of herbs, EVOO, a little white wine, and just enough garlic to make it good. Happy food dance. (what my kids call it when I wiggle in my chair in delight over a really good dish)

Apparently my DH has ordered concrete for this afternoon, so I'm off to get rebar and wire in place. Wish me luck with the leveling and smoothing! (should be ok, we used a laser level to set the forms, but you never know)

[egalecki]

Whew! We have concrete foundation! My lovely husband wheeled it from the truck in the alley, I shoved it around with the rake and screeded (?) it and then he brushed it and I did the edge thingy and made a couple of fracture points between the WFO part and the counter side and the BBQ side. I'm going to have to use some mortar under the first course of block to be absolutely sure I am starting level, I expect, but it looks pretty good!

[egalecki]

some more pictures

I made stepping stones out of leftover concrete using a box of cove molding with duct tape- I don't know how they'll turn out, but it was better than wasting it!

[gjbingham]

Nice concrete work!

I posted my recipe for mussels a couple of weeks ago, but its hidden in another thread. A search for mussels should find it pretty easily. I highly recommend you try it.

Keep up the good work!

[egalecki]

Playing with the block layout- I had two 64" precast lintels along with all of these block in the home of leftover building supplies- DH has suggested building a corner and two walls, as laid out, and then putting the lintels across the long sides at the top. I'll have to trim the funny end off the corner blocks and cut the end off one lintel to make it fit, but I think it'll work. I'll also have to trim up the edges that come to the cut off corner. I think all the trimming can be hidden on the inside, although the final product shouldn't show anyway once I cover it up with, well, something. I don't know what yet for sure.

I'm going to be a few blocks short, but I refuse to dig around in that barn anymore. I am sure there are big hairy spiders in there and I don't want to meet them. I wore gloves and long sleeves this morning digging around and still felt like they were crawling all over me. Alas, they're my only real fear.

Still, all in all, finding as many essentially free (after all, I think DH paid for them over 10 years ago, so that has to count as free for this project!) blocks as I did will help a bit with cost. So far he hasn't blinked at anything's cost, even the concrete, but I think he's looking forward to pizza, bread and other fine foods...

[Ken524]

Elizabeth,

Looks like you all have a great start. I like the stepping stones. I made some with our leftover concrete also; but yours look much nicer. I made simple squares.

Keep up the good work!

[egalecki]

Originally Posted by Ken524

Elizabeth,

Looks like you all have a great start. I like the stepping stones. I made some with our leftover concrete also; but yours look much nicer. I made simple squares.

Keep up the good work!

I saw yours and stole your idea, with my own twist. I don't know how these will work yet, they aren't as flat as I thought they'd be. But it felt better than wasting the concrete...

[egalecki]

So, now I'm shorter than I was... after lugging all those blocks around all morning, I think I've compressed a few inches I could ill afford to lose

Due to the odd nature of the leftovers I decided to use, my blocks don't all fit as tight as some of yours seem to, but they're very stable, don't rock, and most importantly, they're level. We put rebar in every other hole and filled ALL the holes with concrete. Since we don't have a regular stand going it took fewer than 10 bags of concrete. I did have to use mortar to level the first course with itself and each other, but it worked out ok-the mortar mostly took care of the stupid edge I'd put on- looked really good but not practical under the block edges. Note to anyone else- don't do a nice "sidewalk" edge under the places you are putting block!

We had to cut one end of one of the lintels- wow those things are hard to break, even when scored all the way around with a saw. The rebar inside really wants to keep them together.

Tomorrow we're going to fool around with the decking for the hearth- we're using metal decking like you pour porches on- it should be plenty strong enough and we won't have to mess with a form for the bottom. I doubt we get the hearth poured tomorrow (gotta go see the vet at the barn about breeding a mare, of course it's right in the middle of my day!) but maybe on Thursday if it doesn't monsoon. We haven't been getting regular rain- it either is dry or we get an inch overnight. Even so, it's much better than last year, when we got NOTHING for months.

I'm going to have some work to do on the edges at the front of the oven- I am not sure how to make them pretty. I had a hard time cutting the block at an angle there. Maybe a form and some concrete? Maybe just glue on some wonder board and stucco over it?