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At long last, progress made on finishing my WFO facade!
I left it more or less like this last fall. I did manage to get the concrete countertop/landing you can see the formwork for poured and finished, but that was about it:
wfo in the snow by splatgirl, on Flickr
Carpentry, ugh. Finish carpentry, even bigger ugh. It was like pulling teeth, but I got that stuff over with and slapped some paint on the enclosure fairly early in the spring and then spent most of summer agonizing over what I wanted to do with the big flat surface on the front. Originally I had thought I would mosaic the whole thing, but I decided it really needed something dimensional to make it more interesting, plus I am about mosaic-ed out for this year and the thought of doing another 20 or so square feet was making me nauseous.
I had just finished a huge 3-D mosaic art piece for our local co-op that involved sculpting EPS board and spray foam for the form, and working on that led me to the idea of a curvy mosaic "frame" for the mouth of my WFO. It took me a bit of pondering to get from styrofoam to something heatproof and sculpt-able that would work for a WFO, but then I realized vermicrete...duh.
For support, I made a little bit of wire armature that I stapled to the hardi-backer and then packed and sculpted vermicrete into the shape I wanted and let it cure. It worked even better than I thought it would. So far, anyway.
building the 3D mosaic surface on WFO facade by splatgirl, on Flickr
almost finshed facade by splatgirl, on Flickr
chicken chicken chicken by splatgirl, on Flickr
The rest of the facade is some stainless steel pennyround tile that was a huge splurge but totally drool-worthy. I grouted both elements with charcoal colored grout with the hope that soot would just blend in. I still need to decide what to do with the return and what I can do instead of that white board fascia. What I wouldn't give for a sheet metal brake...
I hope the sculptural element stands up to repeated heat cycling. I'm not worried about the sides, but the part over the top of the arch is cantilevered four or so inches out from the face and in my mind is questionable even with the wire armature under there. I was wondering if I could have overlaid the vermicrete substrate with fiberglass mosaic mesh before I did the glass but wasn't sure how that would take the heat. So we'll see. So far it's only seen one firing.
I left it more or less like this last fall. I did manage to get the concrete countertop/landing you can see the formwork for poured and finished, but that was about it:
wfo in the snow by splatgirl, on Flickr
Carpentry, ugh. Finish carpentry, even bigger ugh. It was like pulling teeth, but I got that stuff over with and slapped some paint on the enclosure fairly early in the spring and then spent most of summer agonizing over what I wanted to do with the big flat surface on the front. Originally I had thought I would mosaic the whole thing, but I decided it really needed something dimensional to make it more interesting, plus I am about mosaic-ed out for this year and the thought of doing another 20 or so square feet was making me nauseous.
I had just finished a huge 3-D mosaic art piece for our local co-op that involved sculpting EPS board and spray foam for the form, and working on that led me to the idea of a curvy mosaic "frame" for the mouth of my WFO. It took me a bit of pondering to get from styrofoam to something heatproof and sculpt-able that would work for a WFO, but then I realized vermicrete...duh.
For support, I made a little bit of wire armature that I stapled to the hardi-backer and then packed and sculpted vermicrete into the shape I wanted and let it cure. It worked even better than I thought it would. So far, anyway.
building the 3D mosaic surface on WFO facade by splatgirl, on Flickr
almost finshed facade by splatgirl, on Flickr
chicken chicken chicken by splatgirl, on Flickr
The rest of the facade is some stainless steel pennyround tile that was a huge splurge but totally drool-worthy. I grouted both elements with charcoal colored grout with the hope that soot would just blend in. I still need to decide what to do with the return and what I can do instead of that white board fascia. What I wouldn't give for a sheet metal brake...
I hope the sculptural element stands up to repeated heat cycling. I'm not worried about the sides, but the part over the top of the arch is cantilevered four or so inches out from the face and in my mind is questionable even with the wire armature under there. I was wondering if I could have overlaid the vermicrete substrate with fiberglass mosaic mesh before I did the glass but wasn't sure how that would take the heat. So we'll see. So far it's only seen one firing.
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