Hi gang - Here's the latest from Portland! So today we put what is hopefully the last of the freezing weather behind us, although we are in for more rain over the next week. Nevertheless, we had a beautiful sunny morning today so I jumped on the opportunity to check out the hearth and make some progress on the build!
first stop, cleared out the tent and space heater, and then took a peak at my hearth to see how it's doing. It looks like a concrete hearth, no surprise there! The loose sandy material on top is about 1-2 mm thick, not a huge deal in my humble opinion. But I'm giving it another week under the plastic before I remove the forms. (That will be 2 weeks total). Weather will be highs in mid 50s (F) and lows in mid 40s with rain showers for the entire time.
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Not satisfied to look at the hearth and will a week to pass in an instant, I decided to pull out the full size floor template, pick through firebrick that arrived last week layout the floor. The next couple shots show the formation of my herringbone pattern, which I realized is quite a puzzle, especially if the pattern starts to get out of alignment. I was expecting the bricks would have some variation in quality. What I didn't expect was for bricks to not be square or plumb. Yet there was some of that so I ended up doing a lot of sorting to build the best floor possible.
I was thinking of building a very large hand sanding disk to go over the floor once it's set in it's final arrangement but I think that could possibly have some unintended side effects, such as expanding gaps for bricks that are not perfectly plumb. Welcome feedback on that idea from the pros!
As for the trial run, I've attached pictures here and am interested to hear if this setup is good enough, or if any of the gaps are unacceptable. Also welcome any tips on how to maintain tight fitting herringbone pattern, as I can see that any small imperfection on one side becomes an unacceptable problem as I continue to layout the floor. Thanks in advance for everyone who's following along and offering tips!
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first stop, cleared out the tent and space heater, and then took a peak at my hearth to see how it's doing. It looks like a concrete hearth, no surprise there! The loose sandy material on top is about 1-2 mm thick, not a huge deal in my humble opinion. But I'm giving it another week under the plastic before I remove the forms. (That will be 2 weeks total). Weather will be highs in mid 50s (F) and lows in mid 40s with rain showers for the entire time.
Not satisfied to look at the hearth and will a week to pass in an instant, I decided to pull out the full size floor template, pick through firebrick that arrived last week layout the floor. The next couple shots show the formation of my herringbone pattern, which I realized is quite a puzzle, especially if the pattern starts to get out of alignment. I was expecting the bricks would have some variation in quality. What I didn't expect was for bricks to not be square or plumb. Yet there was some of that so I ended up doing a lot of sorting to build the best floor possible.
I was thinking of building a very large hand sanding disk to go over the floor once it's set in it's final arrangement but I think that could possibly have some unintended side effects, such as expanding gaps for bricks that are not perfectly plumb. Welcome feedback on that idea from the pros!
As for the trial run, I've attached pictures here and am interested to hear if this setup is good enough, or if any of the gaps are unacceptable. Also welcome any tips on how to maintain tight fitting herringbone pattern, as I can see that any small imperfection on one side becomes an unacceptable problem as I continue to layout the floor. Thanks in advance for everyone who's following along and offering tips!
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