Antique brick, Bluestone slabs, a clay tile roof and some quirky salvaged features made this a fun and creative project, our first pizza oven. Near Lincoln Park in West Seattle.
My client showed me some antique ceramic sconces from Italy, some red clay roof tiles, and an old turbine barn ventilator. "I want the pizza oven to look like a house and it should incorporate these somehow." It so happens I had just seen a great instance of a house-shaped oven so I was eager to get started with it.
This was part of a big yard remodel that involved cladding the wooden fence with corrugated steel, building a very tight stone wall and laying a bunch of paver slabs. Later I created a planting design and installed it.
The Base Structure
First the base was built up on a poured concrete footing. there is a core of reinforced cinderblock CMU forming the base structure which was covered in brick. Then we poured in place the concrete slab that fupports the oven floor.
The oven structure was chosen by the client, a three-piece dome and stainless stovepipe made by Forno Bravo. This was carefully assembled and sealed with heat refractory mortar. The floor of the oven is covered in fire brick and grouted.
The compartment underneath the oven is of course for firewood.
The House and Roof
Galvanized steel studs were used to frame the upper structure. This was then clad in Hardi-Backer cement panels. Inside the framing was the requisite ceramic-fiber insulation which helps to make the oven chamber as potentially hot as possible. The vertical surfaces all got the tight ledgestone veneer (matching the retaining wall in the background) while the roof was made using the 2'-long red clay shingles.
We gave this the perfectionist treatment, and our client loves it, says it works like a charm!
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