Treehouse Pizza

[Chach]

Great job Randy! I have been wanting to get on to see your progress. What a great accomplishment to get it functional in time for your party. Works been crazy here lately but I'm glad I was able to get a look at your project an plan on seeing the next phase of your finished dome and covering.

Ricky

[RandyJ]

Hey JRPizza that is Peanut. He is our almost 3yr old Boston terrier. He loves to be outside with me when I am working on pretty much anything. I was making the pizzas out in the yard and he was cleaning up any spilled cheese or whatever hit the ground. I do not believe he actually got any scraps this time but he did get a bite of chicken from the wings the other day. When we got him he was the runt and seemed very small but he is a monster of a Boston at almost 25#and not fat at all.

Giovanni Rossi you are right that I gave it my all to try to get this usable by now. I took a number of half days off of work and used every available moment of time. My wife was not always very happy with me for working on it obsessively. The problem with projects like this is it is not just building the oven dome. It is building the slab and stand and the dome and what ever the finish is and possibly a patio and possibly a pavilion or gazebo. Each one step is not a terrible amount of work but when you try to slam through all the steps at the same time one after another it can get to be almost overwhelming. I had to break it up into small steps or chunks in my mind to not feel buried by the project. Once I get the roof done I need to go back to finishing the guest bedroom I was working on in our basement . I think I am going to push the patio off till next year as once this part is done it will be good to go and that will not affect function.

Randy

[JRPizza]

I think your pooch is waiting for that pie to slide off of the peel. He (she?) has been in on this project from the start and hopefully was able to share in some of the rewards. My dearly departed dog really loved her crust!

[SableSprings]

Glad to hear your return to the joys of pizza with friends & families went well...using a great looking oven you built! Doesn't get much better than that.

[RandyJ]

UtahBeehiver and Giovanni Rossi thanks for the comments. The party went well. I made a total of 8 pizzas . I have not made many pizzas in the last 5 years but it is kinda like riding a bike. Once you know it is hard to forget. Plus my son invited his friends family over and I am friends with his dad who is a executive chef who spent some time working at a Italian restaurant that had a wood fired oven. So he was helping me too so that made things a bit easier. Fortunately the rain held off and it was a wonderful evening.

Randy

[Giovanni Rossi]

You really gave it everything you had to make the deadline. Amazing work!

Hope the weather holds. Even if it doesn't, a bad day with good pizza is better than just about any other day without!

Enjoy the party. You earned it!

[UtahBeehiver]

Good luck on maiden voyage of oven number 2. You should be an old pro on cooking already.

[RandyJ]

Well wish me luck. Tomorrow is the first pizza party. I am about as ready as I can be. I have my dough made doing a cold rise in the fridge for 24hrs. I have 1 of my sauce made and melding in the fridge and I have the wood in the oven so it doesn't get soaked if it happens to storm tonight like they are claiming it might. I had basically the whole dome cleared last night so I am just going to let it rip tomorrow and try to get up to temp fairly quickly. Having the fire all built will help me here too so that I Don't have to do that once I get home from work. There will be enough other things to do. Like cut up all the toppings and get all the other things ready.

Randy

[RandyJ]

Hey david ssi did not do to many rounds of filling pinholes. I am pretty happy with how it turned outas there were some really rough spots from when I poured it. The concrete set up way faster then I ever imagined it would and I wound up with a few severely rough spots. I filled those in with slurry but they are not totally smooth. I think it is close enough though and I am not going to do anything to them most likely. I am going for a bit of a rustic look and it kinda adds to that look being not perfect. If I was going for that I would have had to pay some one to do it for me and that probably would have cost half of what I spent on this project or more. Just not in the cards.

Randy

[david s]

I finished polishing the counter tops to 800 grit this morning. I am glad to be done with that. Step. It is such a sloppy messy job and makes a huge mess of everything in the area.

On the other hand I can't believe how well they turned out considering that i simply used sack mix concrete and dye. The variety of colors is crazy and i can not wait to see it once all cleaned up and sealed.

Does anyone have a great suggestion for a sealer?

Randy

Nice job, did you have to fill and repolish too many pinholes?
Your stone facing looks terrific.

[RandyJ]

I got another day of work in on the stone veneer. It is such a slow process but I am happy with how it is turning out. I now have the front and both sides completely covered. I also had another curing fire today. I am going to consider it fully cured as the dome was pretty much fully cleared. This was the 7th fire and I again ran it from like 10 am to7 pm and just slowly brought up the temperature.

Seeing as the oven was hot I decided to wing it and did some salt and vinegar chicken wings. They turned out fantastic and i will have to try that recipe again in the future.

Randy

[RandyJ]

Well I had another curing fires today. That is either 5 or 6 depending on weather or not I count the one on Wednesday. I started it at around 9:40 this morning and kept it going until about 7pm tonight. I think the dome is curred as it was starting to clear on spots. I did not have a very big fire going at all but kept it pretty consistent and after 8ish hours spots were clearing that were close to the fire at that time. I looked close and I am not seeing any signs of cracks so I am feeling pretty good so far.

I also got some more work done on the stone veneer. That is a very putzy project. Fortunately I like to do putzy type of work. I think I am going to have to get the wet saw out tomorrow though so I can getcsome of the front done now too. I also got the wood in around all the openings. I used ceader tone treated pine. I went with the treated because that is what the pavilion is going to be made of and that is what the treehouse is made of. I am just wanting it to all match. Plus it will not rot or fade really so it will keep looking good for a long time. I am relieved to see that my opening for the mini fridge is still large enough to fit but small enough to look like it was meant to be there and not a after thought. I have about .5" extra in both directions so it will be just right.

Randy

[RandyJ]

So does this count as first pizza?

[RandyJ]

I got a bit of a short 5th fire in today. I got out of my shutdown a bit early so I decided to quickly light another fire. So far I don't think the oven has dropped below 150-200F since I started curing fires on Saturday morning.

I also finished getting all 6 of the outside corners clad in veneer. I am very excited to get that step complete as then it will start to look more like a completcompleted project. Having the corner done also convinced me I made the right call on counter tops overhang. They are 1 to 2 " farther then the veneer.

At this point I am feeling good that I will make the pizza deadline for my sons birthday. Kind of amazing that just as I needed it to stop raining it did. I almost feel like I could send it to pizza temperature tomorrow and have no problems. I am not going to do that but with the oven this warm for this long I feel like it almost can't still be wet.

Randy

[RandyJ]

Well curing fires number 4 is in the books. It went well and was very uneventful wich is good. I am not sure I will make fire number 5 tomorrow as I have a shutdown to go to for possibly 12 hrs. I am not sure it will actually go that long but that is what I agreed to.

In other news I got a message that my stone veneer showed up. So being a mixture of dumb and cheep I went to pick it up myself instead of having it delivered. I also picked up 3 bags of mortar for it. I got 4 of the 6 corners covered and finished unloading all of it. I am ready to be done dragging thousands of pounds of stuff home again. There is a few things left to go though. Like 24 to 30 bags of concrete for the footings unless i spend big money and get diamond peirs and then there is all the 6x6 posts for the pavilion. At least the list is getting shorter and i think i may put off the patio till next year.

Randy