This is the anti-travel post I suppose. I had a friend in New Zealand who went through the trouble of building her own pizza oven, which resulted in some of the best, most fun, seemingly effortless parties I can remember. She'd make the dough, fire up the oven, put out some of her homebrew beer, and ask everyone to bring a couple of their favorite toppings. Instant party! Everyone would have fun trying to design the perfect or most creative pizza and then share it around. You can feed anyone with pizza (gluten-free, vegan, meat lovers, etc.) and can even make dessert pizzas to top the evening off. Ever since then I knew I wanted to build a pizza oven some day when I had a place of my own. No one told me how much work it would be!
I spent quite a while trying to figure out where to put it, eventually realizing there just was not enough room right next to the house. Once I came up with a plan to build rock retaining walls on the lower lot a solution appeared: Sara helped me realize it could fit nicely on a retaining wall with the added bonus that I would not have to build a stand to support the multi-ton structure. I sought out advice from friends that had built ovens and I scoured the internet which is full of enthusiasts and master craftsman. With a design sketched out it then came down to many many weekends of my dad helping me. Some of the steps were unsurprisingly improvised as we went. I learned a lot of useful skills along the way from pouring concrete to laying bricks to stucco work to mosaic inlays. Some of the steps were satisfying, some painfully slow, some remarkably stressful.
The final touch that really makes it for me is the custom mosaic I laid out for the front made of slices of rock collected by my dad and I when I was a kid. About 80% of them we collected personally out in the desert, every one having a story behind it. After putting so much work into the pizza oven I felt the need to put a little more effort in to give it that personal touch. After a year in the making it is finally ready to be fired!
2. Create rock retaining walls (crew of four with a Bobcat)
3. Level rock retaining walls
4. Clear, level, and tamp platform site
5. Make platform frame to pour concrete
6. Pour structural concrete layer with rebar mesh
7. Pour insulating concrete layer with vermiculate
8. Sort best firebricks for floor and layout on platform
9. Make interior floor form and cut floor bricks to shape
10. Remove bricks then set in fireclay/sand mud
11 Place soldier course (first vertical layer) with refractory mortar
12. Use pivoting floor jig to place two courses at the right angle using wood shims, offsetting seams
13. Create a door form then cut bricks to create the interior archway
14. Add two more courses with custom cuts at archway
15. Remove floor jig and add a styrofoam dome form for support
16. Set one more course with tricky archway cuts
17. Place five more courses
18. Cut and set a tight keystone of 3 bricks (12 courses including keystone to complete dome)
19. Seal all internal gaps in dome with mortar and also in entryway floor
20. Build entryway walls
21. Cut chimney base plate to size and saw a slit in the dome archway for it to sit in
22. Readjust door form to become the entryway form (larger)
23. Complete entryway arch with the chimney base plate integrated
24. Mortar chimney in place and mortar internal entryway gaps
25. Wrap dome to size in insulating layer
26. Cut and anchor wire lath to the form of the dome
27. Scratch coat for dome stucco and side
28. Brown coat for dome stucco and side
29. Color stucco coat for dome and side
30. Paint redgard on platform to seal and protect
31. Cut and layout square foot mosaic to fit platform
32. Thinset and grout platform mosaic
33. Polish and seal platform mosaic
34. Scour childhood rock collection, sorting, flattening, and polishing rock slices
35. Lay out rock slices on a template of the platform front
36. Transfer mosaic pattern to a sticky mesh backing and seal rocks with protectant
37. Thinset and grout custom mosaic front (with special attention to the front/top join)
38. Install stainless steel rails in the entryway to guide heavy door in and out
39. Light a series of increasingly hot fires in the oven to cure the refractory mortar
40. Make pizza!
A huge thanks to my dad for all the quality time building this functional piece of art with me.
