walls

We have some walls. Partly. In most of the places they need to be. Braving the last few days of hot, hot weather, we've managed to get the exterior portion of almost all the walls up. Only the front right corner is left. Both front corners will be filled with windows above the short walls. Doing a bit of framing feels great... it goes so quickly. On Monday we will start spreading out and securing the 34 rafters. It is really starting to look like a building now, and it is very satisfying.

posts & purlins

As planned, the crane arrived this afternoon, and in just under 2 hours, transformed scattered posts and purlins into the structure of a bakery! As usual, there is still lots to do, but it is a wonderful feeling to have this step done. The crane will be back on Tuesday to lift the 34 6x10 rafters up on to the purlins, then we will space them out and begin attaching them. Everything went very smoothly, and all the pieces fit together nicely - proof of a great job done by everyone involved.

t-17 hours

Today was a great day. Tomorrow promises to be even better. The beautiful weather is supposed to hold through the weekend, and we ended today with 10 of 16 posts standing. Tomorrow morning after baking we will help prepare the remaining posts (and arches), and drill holes in the slab for the brackets to help hold the posts. Then, in the afternoon, a crane truck will arrive to lift the purlins up on to the posts, then place the 34 6x10 rafters up on top of the purlins for later placement. By the end of tomorrow afternoon, the bakery structure will basically be in place!

done, done, done, done, dome!

The dome of the wood oven is finished. Now all that needs doing is the chimney, the cladding, the insulation, the facade, etc. Some of these things won't get done right away, but we would like the oven usable fairly soon. The second photo shows the vent in the back side of the dome that will join with the main exhaust pipe coming from the side of the oven below the slab. We placed three thermocouples in the dome to help us when we are learning how to operate the oven efficiently.

it's that time again

Today is the day before the Farmer's Market. It seems that I now measure my week by the market. Sunday is "recover from market day", Thursday is "start resting for market day", and so on. It's lunch time, and it's raining. We got two more rows of dome bricks layed out, but we need more mortar. This afternoon will be spent prepping for tomorrow morning. The dome only needs a half day of work to be finished, then we can clad the outside of the dome with a layer of refractory fondu cement mixed with some more stainless steel needles. After that, the first fire won't be too far off!

growing a dome

Our wood oven dome grew by three rows today. It is amazing the difference a few bricks can make. It feels like we are making some progress again, now that the dome is going up. Paul and i figure we should be able to finish the dome with one more solid days of cutting and mortaring. The lower photo is the view through the bake door.

minor change of plans

Nothing major, but we figured that since we'll likely have heat to spare, we'd get into the bath house business as well. We're going to have an assortment of "traditional" baths, all heated by the wood fired oven. People will be able to enjoy a relaxing soak in the tub and a warm scone at the same time.

We've now stuck down the first row of bricks for the dome, and are waiting for a friend's brick saw before continuing. We also borrowed a couple of scaffolding stages, and I took a panoramic photo of the building site (there are a couple of glitches, so I'll try to get a better one after the rain stops). It is once again the day before the market, and this afternoon will be spent prepping for the long night and day ahead. Hopefully the rain clears by tomorrow morning :)

movin' on up

Today Paul & I stuck down the perimeter hearth bricks, and brought down the two door frames to decide on how we want to mount them. The one that is upper center is the door we will put the bread in/out through. The actual door part is obviously not there for the photo. We have a few more plywood forms to cut for the dome, and we want to install the doors before starting on the dome.

hearth! hearth!

Today we (mostly Paul) managed to lay the bricks forming the baking surface of the oven. They need some minor adjustments before we can stick the outer few layers of bricks together, but that should be finished tomorrow. Then we can start putting up the forms for the dome, as well as installing the beautiful doors we had made.

Oh yeah, and Billy was busy working on posts and arch templates. Here's a photo of a pretty much completed post waiting to be erected permanently (insert your own joke here, I'm too tired).