Le Oven

I have decided to post some pictures of the progress on the pizza oven. It has been a massive project consisting almost entirely of skills I do not possess. I don't have a "before" picture but it is built on the site of a large palo verde tree. Basically I poured a 3 sided retaining wall and then filled in the tree well. Here is a picture of that with my 6" slab that is about 6' x 7'.

I had to build a block foundation which the oven sits on top of.

You can see from the above picture the form that is poured for the oven hearth. It is reinforced with 5/8" rebar and separated from the block base by about 1" leaving it "suspended." On top of the hearth is a layer of fire brick laid on 1/4" of clay and sand.

 In front of the fire brick is a row of bull nose red brick to finish the oven face. I have also laid out the bottom layer of oven bricks.

Most recently I have been trying to finish the main body of the oven. So far I only have pictures of the first arch and the rear having been built up. The arch is laid over a wood form and then the form is moved forward for each additional arch. If you could see my face when the form was removed and the arch remained standing you would see a mix of pure joy and surprise.

There is still quite a bit of work to do but these are very exciting times!