Treehouse Pizza

[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]

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

[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

[UtahBeehiver]

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

[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!

[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

[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.

[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!

[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

[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 Chach thanks for the comments. I am afraid my job is about to ramp up now too. July just kinda slipped away from me and I got almost nothing done. It was either to hot to do anything or it was raining or we were on vacation. So I finally got around to laying out my roof structure that I am planning. As with almost everything I do there appears to be a bit of scope creep going on. My original plan called for a 8x12 pavilion. I laid it out and it was just feeling a bit tighter than I had originally planned. So I called a neighbor over and my wife to try to decide what to do. So I am now planning to keep the same width and extend another two feet forward. This will give me plenty of room to hopefully keep out of the rain. I think I will have a shade over 4' of roof in front of the counter tops under the roof now at this point. I will just switch the side 6x6 from a 8' to a and then add a bit to the front height to make sure that I keep the same proportion. I looked up the rafters span tables and it appears that I should still be just fine there too in staying with 2x6. Does anyone see a problem with that? It looks like about a 10.5' span roughly if I didn't goof the math.

In a slightly different note I did actually use the oven a fair bit in July. I did chicken wings twice made Tomahawk's and a total of 32 pizzas. Not bad for a fairly busy month.

Randy

[RandyJ]

I got lucky and it cooled off for a few days this weekend so I managed to get the bases drilled and filled with concrete. I rented a towable hydraulic auger. And used that to drill 12" holes 48" deep. I then poured them yesterday. Each hole took roughly 7.5 bags of concrete and I put 3 sections of rebar in each base and a 12" J bolt that was 5/8" diameter. Hopefully can get started on the structure soon.

Randy

[RandyJ]

Now that my base has set up for a week or so I started getting the bits and peices of the pavilion together. I wanted to have all the post bases and any other brackets to be power coated black as I think that will look a lot better. I went with OZCO so far I am happy with how they look and feel. I also managed to go get 4 of my 6x6x 12' posts and 2 of the 6x6x 10'. I started cutting up all the smaller parts and have all the braces cut and a few other small parts too. I now need to get my 6x6x8' posts and 2x6x12' rafters. I also finally found the right person at home depot to order my 6x6x16' posts. That was difficult at best. I almost changed my plan because I couldn't find someone who knew what they were doing. It was quite the challenge moving the 12' post by myself. I would guess they are over 100# each. I can't wait for the 16'ers to show up. At least I had them delivered.

Randy

[RandyJ]

Ok I finally managed to get a bit of time here over the holiday weekend to work on the oven again. I had already pre cut almost all the posts. So today was basically just put all the parts in place and bolt together. I was going to try to get some help but that didn't work out so I just went for it. I had all the upright posts all cut to length a few days ago. I used a laser level and checked footing height off my counter tops. I had formed them level so I just assumed they were. After they I added 4' to that length as I wanted to lower the roof height a little bit so the beams are at like 7.5' vs 8' I want it to be a little cozy feeling. After those were all in place and braced I cut the side beams to length and did the last lap joint and the lifted them into place and tossed 2 x 5" construction screws in to hold it in place on each end. Then I finally chickened out and got a neighbor to spot me as I lifted the front beam in to place. It weighs about 130# and getting it on my shoulder and carrying it to the back yard was all I could muster. Once it was up in place I used some ratchet straps to pull it tight and then drove a 10" GRK lag screw through the corner and into the upright. So far I am very happy with how it is turning out.

Randy

[RandyJ]

Well I managed to get a bit more done today. I got all the bracing in that I can at this point. I used a ratchet strap to pull the brace tightly into place and then put the metal OZCO bracket in place. I upsized the lag screws to make them more functional. I used 3.75" for straight into the beam and 5.75" for through the brace and into the beam. I am very happy with how it is looking so far. It has been going together pretty well considering i have been doing it all by myself.

I also made pizza again today. My son starts 4th grade tomorrow and he really wanted pizza today so i made that happen. I am now at 46 pizza out of this oven so i have not made as many this month but i have been working over time far more than i wanted. So that takes a lot of my free time away from me.

Randy