More Planning

Tonight Scott and I sat down, under the gazebo, overlooking the new slab, and planned the next phase of this project. No kids, and a couple bottles of beer made the evening very enjoyable.

The size of our base will be 56" (3 1/2 concrete blocks) wide by 64" (4 concrete blocks) long. The height will be 40" - five blocks tall. We will leave a hold in the front (for wood), which will be three block high, and two more above. Chad told us to plan for the hearth to fall between your belly button and diaphragm; for Scott that is 45". Above the 40" blocks we will put a 3 1/2" slab, a 1" ceramic pad and 2 1/2" firebrick for a total of 47".

We are planning to bring the next level (the oven itself) in a bit - only in the front - and the third (and final) layer will come in yet again. Remember, here is our dream:

We talked, at some length, about the facade; we are using field stone. I would love to use the FREE stone from the farm Scott grew up on, but we know that will require a lot of our time. We have time, but we would rather spend it making pizzas then becoming masonry experts. We calculated it would cost around $1,500 (160 square feet) to purchase a man-made, easy to install, field stone veneer. If we go this route, we will wait until 2013 as we didn't plan that in the budget. At this point we are just going to wait. I am going to research some cheaper stores (the $1,500 comes from our local landscaping company Timberwall). I also contacted Tom Hickson and he suggested I look into 'Slipform' Stone Masonry; you put a form in front of the wall and simply stack the stone in the form and add concrete. A thought ...

Here is the paperwork from our evening of planning. As we wrapped up the night we reminded ourselves that this project doesn't come with an instructional manual. We know there will be things we wish we would have done differently, but we just need to go with what we feel is best at this point.