Ah! It's all coming together... Slowly!!!

The Extra soil being removed is being used around the bananas and also the lemon tree to not only bring the ground level but also to add soil where it sure needs it (there is approx 2-5 cms of top soil where the previous owners had the land 'cut n' filled'...

Rocks are laid... boards in place! just need more man (woman) power now!

Is it making any sense yet! It will involve cement, bricks, rocks and hard labour!

Is it a Sauna? Tool shed? Duck pond? or just a Folly (perhaps even bespoke!)

Still wondering what we're up to?

The grass needs to be removed and we are using the sods to grass ares that could benefit from the extra soil and grass plants.

Next on the list of things to do was to remove the top soil and place that soil in areas that need it... not that the whole place could benefit from extra soil... this soil is destined for the banana trees and the citrus.

A trip to the locally privately owned quarry... and you think we get stoned in other ways. tsk tsk tsk!

The bus brings home the booty (albeit in first gear at times!) watch this space for more clues soon! Ciao!!!

Watch This Space/Hole

Guess what this hole is for and win a weekend for two at Wanungara! No clues but the photos and as we progress with the work little teaser pics will be added... put your thinking caps on!!!

Never a dull moment, we just keep on working and devising new things to get our creative juices flowing!

Wood Fired Pizza Oven [stage 4]

So it's finally time to fire up the oven and see if it works! That is to see if it will hold it's heat, cook pizza and some bread in the stored heat afterwards.

Mmmmmm! Pizzas cooking away nicely... The recipe for the base came from a great bread book called 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice' which has some fantastic incites in to bread and it's making plus some of the best recipes I have tried (not that I have tried a lot before the oven was made!)

Charles is certainly happy at the helm of the oven... handles a peel like a pro! and just like Charles... they're big and they're cheesy!!!

So the final conclusion... a great success! There will be many pizzas cooked in this little beauty and a few parties too I would say! interestingly the oven is still toasty warm 48 hours later!

There are a couple of things we would do differently next time. it was a learning curve and we did make mistakes, but hey! it works and that's all that really matters when you have a mouthful of good pizza!!!

Wood Fired Pizza Oven [stage 3]

More hard work, a weekend with a bricksaw (luckily it was sunny so the solar panels helped reduce the energy use. The saw was required to cut the angles on the bricks so that the dome took shape without too much refractory mortar required.

Then layer by layer, brick by brick, the dome takes shape!

With the brickwork finished and the chimney in place... Hmmm! can almost smell those pizzas already!

Charles made a fairly solid door for the front out of some of the hard wood we had left over from the Guest room build. lined inside with a sheet of thin steel to keep the heat in and to protect the door.

The insulation layer of vermiculite is then spread over the brickwork, this in retrospect, should have been replaced by a fibreglass insulation blanket which would have allowed for the expansion of the chamber more than the vermiculite does.

Then a render coat over the top and the oven is ready for a small fire to test the brickwork and then a raging fire to get some food cooked!!! looking forward to it!

Wood Fired Pizza Oven [stage 2]

Cleaning up after pouring the Vermiculite! (see I told you I did some work too!)

Bricks are then laid out to get the angles and amount of bricks needed for the bottom layers.

A few bricks were laid out to get the doorway and chimney area worked out before everything is set in place.

We used firebricks on the floor of the oven, but in retrospect we should have used the same solid fired clay bricks that we used on the rest of the oven... better thermal mass!

The oven is taking shape! more tomorrow!

Wood Fired Pizza Oven [stage 1]

One of those things that I have always wanted... A wood fired pizza oven (and big enough to cook a meal not just pizzas as well as a few loaves of bread in.)

So, we have decided to build a BBQ and Pizza Oven in the new outdoor area we built over Xmas and here is the story of that build!

Started with a good solid foundation to support the weight of a lot of bricks, concrete and of course pizza dough! We laid out the bricks and worked out the best arrangement for both the oven and the BBQ (a later project) before mortaring all the walls permanently.

we then poured a solid slab of concrete over the top which is to become the base for the entire oven (this was seriously reinforced and just to make sure we added an extra column of bricks in the middle) 'Belts and Braces' as Charles likes to call it.

Next step is the vermiculite layer which will act as an insulation layer to prevent heat loss through the oven floor.

More photos and the rest of the story to follow!