Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

[exceloven]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

Nikki,
Whats up? 1/18....that was the last time you updated us on your build. Time for an update. Did you already go to Italy? I can't remember, is the baby getting close. People need to know!

Mark

[Modthyrth]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

I've been slowly working on the stone veneer for the outdoor kitchen. I'm almost done with it now--just need to do some patchwork on the textured cement board and paint it before I can do the pattern of stonework up the corners.



View from the front. You can see we actually have dirt and plants in the raised garden bed! We have strawberries, spinach, lettuce, brussel sprouts, a couple flowers, yellow pear tomatoes, spearmint, basil, dill, parsley, rosemary, oregano, and cilantro growing. Ainsley declared our trip to the nursery "The best errand ever!"



While I was working on the veneer today, Ainsley brought out her sketchpad and made a poster so that everyone would know this is the Pizza House. Her very creative spelling, translated, is "My House is the Pizza Place. The Pizza Oven." Signed by the artist, of course.



It warms my heart that she loves the pizza oven so much. She attended a birthday party at a kid's instructional kitchen place, where the lesson of the day was pizza. You should have seen her showing her preschool buddies the proper way to toss and shape dough (not quite what the instructors were teaching), and asking if perhaps they had any olive oil instead of sauce, since she likes a quatro frommagio pizza. At the end, as they were all eating the pizzas, the instructors asked all the kids if the pizza was worth two thumbs up. Most of the kids cheered, except mine--who quietly considered and gave it two thumbs down. I quickly made her stop and told her that wasn't polite, but I (and some friends we've invited over for pizza) were holding back our laughter. I've created a five year old pizza snob. ;-)

New baby girl is due on May 20th. I'm in the final stretch and feeling pretty good, but predictably huge and ungainly. I don't think I'll be crawling up to do the roof until after the baby is here and my center of gravity is back to normal.

[Les]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

New baby girl is due on May 20th..

Very cool! Any names yet? Don't do anything crazy. I took my wife out to the mountains looking for a Xmas tree - went into labor the next day. You are a way's off but you never know.

Oh yea, all that stuff about the oven is good.

Seriously, it's looking great!

Les...

[exceloven]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

Hi Nikki,
Its nice to see you making progress on your oven, I haven't touched mine in three weeks. Very frustrating. Sometimes life gets in the way. I love your stonework, I like the tie-in between the oven and planter. Keep us posted.

Mark

[Modthyrth]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

No name chosen, but we have a few top contenders. I love Niamh (traditional Irish spelling, pronounced Neev) and have for about 15 years. Yeah, she'd have to explain the pronunciation to everyone this side of the pond her whole life, but I love the name. Another possibility is Imogen/Innogen (undecided if we go with the Shakespearean typo spelling or the traditional one), nickname Ginny. Drew would love something Swedish, to reflect his family's heritage, but so far he hasn't suggested anything I really like.

[yakfishingfool]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

Read it all and thoroughly enjoyed it. What is the top down fire??? SCott

[Modthyrth]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

Read it all and thoroughly enjoyed it. What is the top down fire???

Hey Scott--

It's just kind of the reverse of the teepee style fire I was taught to build in Girl Scouts. You start with the biggest logs on the bottom layer, and get progressively smaller as you lay the logs in each perpendicular layer, ending up with kindling and dryer lint and such on the very top of the pile, instead of buried at the bottom. Light at the top, and the embers fall down and light the layer below. It's pretty awesome! Here's a link posted here on the forums:

Top down

and here's a video James made of the technique:

Forno Bravo Video | Build a Top Down Fire

I haven't converted my husband to the technique yet, but when he's not bogarting fire duty, I always use it.

[yakfishingfool]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

I often BBQ with a minion method. Unsure if it would work in the wood fired oven....it is a base of unlit coals that have a top of lit coals applied. The heat works down so yo are not passing lit through unlit coals and spreading odors and the like. Will try the upside down method ths summer when camping. Thanks. Scott

[Frances]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

Hey Nikki, good to hear from you! I have been wondering how you're getting on... not long to go now.

Your oven and planter look fantastic, I love the stone veneer! In fact, sort of inspired by your work, I've started a raised vegetable bed in our garden. And your daughter's art work is priceless, thank you for posting that. She's obviously very proud of your work. And knows a good pizza when she sees one .

[Dancing Bear]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

Congratulations . . . if more of us were pizza snobs at five, we'd all eat better

[berryst]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

You got quite the following. Its been fun to follow your project. And to think that summer is coming to the southwest....your can just put the pizza on the side walk and if your quick enough it wont burn before its retrieved
berryst

[egalecki]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

The whole project looks great. I am envious of your raised bed- it has things growing in it! Mine are still barren, since the weather hasn't cooperated.

Hang in there until May. It's almost here. I remember the last 10 weeks seeming to take FOREVER.

[Modthyrth]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

A little more progress. We've figured out how to cap the wall behind the grill, and have granite for the countertop, so I'm finally able to do the rest of the stone veneer.

Tile roof is on, so we're thoroughly watertight now. No more racing out with a tarp when the rare storm blows through.

We dug a trench for the electric and plumbing for the grill last weekend. Drew did most of the digging, but I took a few turns with the pickaxe. It's not wise to interfere with serious nesting.





I need to get some polishing pads to finish up the edges nicely, but was lucky to find a nice and inexpensive piece of remainder granite just the right size yesterday.

[mfiore]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

Nikki, it's looking awesome! What is the roof made of? Could you post some close up photos of it?

[Modthyrth]

Re: Nikki's 42" in Phoenix, where it's hot as a...

The roof is covered in concrete tile shingles--very common here in Arizona. The style kind of mimics slate, and we chose it to come close to matching the tile on our house (which you can see a little of in the top left corner of the second picture). We couldn't get an exact match, because it turns out that the tiles we have on our roof are an insanely expensive custom tile. Go figure. I always thought they were uglier than average. But we got a close color match and the same texture, so it works for me.

The structure is too tall for any but our very tallest friends to really see anything more than the hip pieces on the edge. Oh well--that makes me even happier we decided not to go with the very expensive copper roof!

We had a guy come in and install the roof for us. He's a commercial roofer by trade, used to doing the roofs of super-walmarts and the like, but he has access to all the materials he needs in his company's remainder graveyard. I was perfectly content to have someone else crawling around on the roof at this stage of my pregnancy. ;-) I'll take some closer pictures in the daylight tomorrow.

We did a basic job roofing the structure with the concrete board. He put a layer of plywood over that, then 80lb rolled roofing material (I think. Might have been 50lb. Definitely more than 30lb). The concrete tiles were nailed down on top of that. He had this great power drill-driven caulking gun, and made that thing practically airtight. Let the monsoons come!