My Adventure Continues

So this afternoon I decided to take the plunge and lay the tiles on the counter top. I mixed a thick mortar for this. I also used a screen and sifted both the sand and the subsoil so the mortar was heavy and stiff. I also added an extra half of a bucket of sifted subsoil to make the mortar sticky.

I laid down a bed of mortar about 1/2 inch thick. I then smoothed and leveled out the mortar bed. I followed that with scratching the mortar bed with the toothed trowel. I then had to lay out all of the tiles and make sure they were aligned and even. Once that was done I took my 6 foot level and laid it across each row in both directions and on the diagonal. I used the level to press in the tiles so they would be as level as I can get them.

After setting the tiles with the level I checked to make sure they were secure and not loose. I did have to tap a few tiles with the rubber mallet to seat them. We then went back and added some cob mix as grout in between the tiles.

So here is the freshly laid and grouted tile counter top. Not to bad for recycled tile and a bunch of dirt, huh? My next steps are to clean the counter top after it cures and see is I need to add anything else to the grout. Then I'll apply some boiled linseed oil to seal and make the counter top water proof. After that I need to add the outer layer on the oven dome and then plaster the whole oven. Once the plastering dries it'll be time to white wash. Yes I know I said white wash and I'm expecting someone to come up with some kind of joke or reference to Tom Sawyer. There is light at the end of the tunnel, um soon I think. Well that's all for today.

My Adventure In Tile

Well my day started out good. I was sore and stiff from working on the oven for the last few days but, I was excited to start working on the tile for the counter. Laying this tile represents hitting the home stretch on this oven. Wow, was I in for a surprise.

So I begin by getting out my terra cotta tile and laying them out on the counter. The first thought that ran through my head was "Oh Crap!". It turns out that in adding the bricks and filling all of the gaps I had inadvertently nearly doubled the square footage of the counter and I now only had about half of the terra cotta tiles that I needed. So much for my good mood.

Ah, I have an idea. Our friends Rick and Bridget were cleaning out their shed and they found some stacks of old used tile. They donated the tile for our project. I was originally thinking of using the tile to cover a table but, this could be a solution for me.

After playing around with different patterns and pieces I had found enough tile to use but, before I could use the tile I had to scrape all of the old mortar off of the tiles. Once that was done I began laying out the tiles on the counter.

OK this took me until about 11 AM to get done but, I knew from here on out the work would go quick and I would have this counter done today. I could not have been more wrong!

So these are my basic tools that I was starting out with. Now had I been working with the terrra cotta (also known as salatilo) tile the tools would have been fine. Terra cotta is made from earthen clay and so is not fire at extremely high temperatures. This makes the tiles softer and easy to mark, score and leave a clean break. All that needs to be done is to use a sanding attachment to finish smoothing the edge.

Well I'm here to tell you that porcelain tile is an entirely different animal. It turns out that porcelain has other components besides clay and is fired at much higher temperatures. This makes the porcelain much harder than the terra cotta and I found this out the hard way. As I had planned to cut the terra cotta by hand I didn't have access to a wet saw or tile saw, man that would have been nice.

So on I went aligning all the tiles and marking them to cut. I thought the heavy duty cutoff discs that I had would work. Boy was I wrong. The cutoff discs wore down before I could cut 1 tile. So I said OK lets just try and score the tiles and break them along the score. Well this sort of worked but, it took a lot of work. I thought about it and decided to try a hand grinder to make the cuts. Wow that was a monster fail. The tile barely got cut and the grinder disc started to heat up bad and wear down fast. OK on to the next idea.

I have a Dremel Multi Max oscillating tool that I had used before so I figured why not I could try it. I put on the diamond tipped grout blade hoping the would last. Well it worked but, man did it cut slow and after cutting a couple of tiles my bad wrist was killing me. So there I was cutting away like crazy when I realized that I was going to have to round some of the cuts to make things fit right. Well how can I do that with this tile? I figured out to get the largest pliers that I had and to use them like nibblers. This actually worked really good to remove a small amount of material at a time but, it was really slow and hard on my wrist and shoulder.

As you can see I finally got all of the tiles cut, wiped clean and set in place ready to be set in some cob mortar. You can also see in the photos that the first was taken early in the morning and the last was taken late in the day. I think I took the last picture at about 5:30 PM. I was wiped out and seriously hurting so I called it a day.

The Base Revisited Day 3

So here it is day 3 and we're still adding more cob. I began by filling in the counter space and adding an angled base around the back side of the oven to meet the cob cap. This allows the back side of the oven will to be setup so any water landing on it be able to run right off.

So you can see where we filled in the counter area and began adding the slope for the water run off. After filling the counter area I checked it for level. Wow, was I seriously out of level. You can see the right corner in the above picture is really low.

In this picture you can see that we continued to fill the counter space and build up the low corner slightly but, still not enough. I had to wait and let this fill of cob setup before I could add anymore. I did trowel the top of the cob fill to make sure I was leveling it out. When I took this picture it was before I roughed up the surface. After letting the cob begin to set I used a toothed trowel edge to make the surface rougher so the next layer would bond well.

You can see the second layer of cob that I added in order to get the counter level. Don't let the depth of the picture fool you, this counter is larger than it looks or what I had originally planned. In order to level the counter I had to use 3 batches of cob. I would recommend here that you may consider using a level and string to make things easier and more level. I wanted to try this experimental build without the string and only use my eye, well hence the reason for needing to fill so much to level the counter.

You can also see that I added the red bricks for the rest of the hearth. I did this before I added the last leveling layer of cob on the counter. I'm sure you're looking at the picture going what's with the cement paver? OK this is for weight only. I used the 2x4 with the paver to add weight on the back of the brick after setting them to keep them level and embed them well. I also added cob mortar in between the hearth bricks to aid in keeping them solid.

Here we added more of the angled base to be able to shed water if it rains. This was where we ended our work for the day.

The Base Revisited Day 2

So we started with 3 courses laid at the beginning of day 2. We started laying the next 2 courses before we took a break. Here are the pictures to show our progress for the morning.

You can see our son Charles getting his rest on our break. In the picture you can see the bricks on the ground. I found it easiest to lay out all 28 1/2 bricks for each course in advance so that I could grab and go to lay the next course. Then we would go back and back fill any gaps.

So here's where we stopped for the day. Yes I can count and no there is not 7 courses. We laid 7 courses and found that we needed one more course in order to be able to level out the counter. It turned out that I only had 14 more bricks. Not enough for a whole course so I spaced out the bricks to wrap around most of the base. I left the back side of the dome open and under the bricks of the hearth open. I used the cob to fill in the gaps between the bricks, as well as to add a cap of cob around the back side of the oven. I also added a cap of cob where I plan on adding more red bricks for the hearth. At this point we called it a day.

The Base Revisited Day 1

So I know that I had shared with you all before the damage that had been done to the base from the weather. Well my fix was to surround the base with adobe bricks and fill any gaps with cob. you can see in the pictures below the progress that we made.

This is the first course of the base that we laid. You can see how we wrapped it around the base and then filled in any gaps. You can see above as our son Charles is working on filling any gaps left after laying the first course. This first coarse you might notice is much whiter than the subsequent courses. I was experimenting with adding hydrated lime to the adobe to help make it more water proof. I was working on a way to use the adobe bricks for a raised garden bed. When I get that project going I will begin a new blog to include that rather than add it to this one. I laid the lime bricks as the ground coarse to help stop any water from wicking up the wall.

So this is where we got to on the first day of building the base. Also each coarse consisted of 28 1/2 bricks. I'm figuring on 7 courses to reach the height I need to fill and cover the weather damage as well as to allow me to level out the side counter.

One quick note I'd like to mention, remember to wet the dry surfaces before adding the cob. By wetting the dry surfaces first this allows the new cob to bind with the already cured surfaces. Water works if there is enough clay in your mix but, if your mix is lean on clay then you'll need to use a thin clay slip.

The Chimney Grows

Well in the last post you saw that I had made a few bricks. Since then I made a few more. In total we made 240 bricks. I decided to use some of the bricks for the rest of the chimney but, I had to fill some big cracks caused by the weather before I began laying the bricks for the chimney.

As you can see in the last 2 pictures I also had cracks on each side of the brick arch that I needed to fill as well. I mixed up a heavy slip to work into the cracks and fill them. I found additional small weather cracks on the face of the upper chimney as well. There was also some areas of grouting between the bricks of the arch that had to be repaired. So I used the heavy slip to fill all of the cracks then mixed the heavy slip with sand to fill the grouting between the bricks.

Once the cracks were filled I was able to begin adding to the chimney. I used 28 bricks to make the chimney. The first thing I did was to use a thin clay slip on top of the existing chimney so that a new layer of cob used as mortar would bond to the existing chimney.

OK so why am I adding more to my chimney? Well when my oven is going full blast to fire it I have seen as much as 2 foot flames coming out of the chimney. Plus when cooking pizzas and other live fire cooking I have had lots of heat and ash exit the chimney at the same level as my head. I felt that it would be good to raise that level.

So I laid a bed of mortar and leveled it out. Then I began laying bricks. I found that dry laying the bricks first was a big help. What I mean by dry laying is to lay out and cut the bricks with mortar spacing so you know how to mortar everything together. Don't set the down into the mortar until you are ready to mortar in between the bricks as well.

Once you have dry laid your row of bricks like I did you will be ready to mortar them into place. I mortared all of my bricks in place and had enough mortar left to begin plastering the chimney and even out the chimney.

So I still have the rest of the of the chimney to plaster but, the chimney has grown.