Why I Oughta...

A couple days ago, I posted details of how I am using sheets of tile (flipped upside down) to create a little drainage pattern that sits on top of the poured concrete hearth of our wood-fired pizza oven .  On top of that tile goes - first - insulation.  Then, the floor and dome.  There are a number of ways to do insulation, but over the past few years, the FornoBravo community has seemed to coalesce around the use of Calcium Silicate Insulation Boards as the *best* insulation.  I found some online - sold locally in Southeast Wisconsin - at a decent price.  I bought 54 square feet of 2" thick boards.  I've opted to go with a double layer - 4" of CalSil boards.  That's the recommendation for the 'best insulation' you can use.  Why insulation? To keep the heat *in* the oven.  In this case, it is about creating a barrier between the cooking floor and the concrete hearth.  From what I understand...if NOT for the insulation, the concrete hearth would act as a '

My brain is already moving ahead to the exterior of the pizza oven.  I don't know if I'll get to cladding the outside of the oven, but I'd like to try this year.  You can go a lot of directions, but the one that I've focused on/been drawn-to is brick.  I've talked about brick and used a TikTok as potential inspiration for a brick pattern . That means that I've been poking around Facebook marketplace and Craigslist to figure out what kind of brick is available.  Every listing quotes the number of bricks available, but I had no idea how many bricks I actually need to clad the full oven.   In terms of oven facade inspiration, I'm very much looking to this oven build on YouTube as inspiration .  That oven is from the YouTube channel named:  The log cabin life style by Jerry Tyson .  This screenshot below is from his oven-build video ( source ) and I'm eye-balling the height of his corners to be five-feet-tall.   I know my stand is 70 inches deep by 62.5 in

A few days ago, I posted a look at a couple of locations for my (hopefully) wood-fired oven to be placed in our backyard.  In that post, I mentioned that I was going after a brick facade and gable roof structure.  But, besides the notion of brick, I haven't - until just now - given much thought into the type of brick and the pattern of brick.  Why am I thinking about that now?  Well... Recently, I saw this TikTok  from Hans Lorei Design ( here's the Hans Lorei Design Instagram Handle  where he posted the same video) about brickwork *used to be so much better* and with the modern way we are building things, the real *art* has been lost and replaced with brick faces on buildings being laid in a field pattern.   It is embedded below.  Click play, and turn on the volume.   @hansloreidesign Our brick work & buildings could be so much better if we embraced more patterns & detail #homedesign #architecture #architecturaldesign #interiordesign #oldbuilding ♬ original sound