The Pizza Oven: Part 1

This is the tale of a girl named Angela who dreamed of having her own pizza oven.  She told her boyfriend Phil of this dream, and he went to work, making a plan.  Sahara thought the plan was good.

However, when Phil told Henry, Sam and Tuna his plan, they were not so optimistic.  But they all nodded and smiled, even though they thought Phil was slightly coo coo.

There was lots of digging to be done.  Phil's hands suffered from blisters for days after, but he was pleased to have the rough callouses.  Whatta man.

The first course set, and Angela was please the work was well underway.

(The big mossy thing next to the pizza oven is an water storage unit, in case you were wondering.)

Sahara was a huge help in the building process.

Sahara has had a knack for building since she was just a tiny pup.

The inside was sprayed with concrete for strength to keep water out of the bricks.

While Phil was busy with that, Angela made this pretty thing, inspired by Shari, known only as The Tin Man at the Inglish household.  She has a fabulous photography business and wonderful blog.  Postcard provided by Latasha and tin provided by chick peas for hummus.

After the big cube was filled with rocks, dirt, and a layer of bricks, Phil shoveled a layer of sand and then placed empty glass bottles on top of that for insulation.

Then Angela and Phil had to go collect more supplies.

And they ran into a slight bottleneck in the road due to some cattle as one tends to do from time to time in Uganda.

And even though it slows one down.

Angela still finds the obstruction charming.

However, this obstruction was not nearly as amusing.  But supplies were found and transported back to the work site.

Of course, no project of any worth gets done around the Gill-Inglish household without some assistant from Els.  She certainly put more work into the pizza oven than Angela.  Here she is patting sand around the bottles.

A rare moment.  Angela working at patting down the sand to flat surface for the flagstones.

This is more typical.

A perfect layout was made to be sure everything was just so.

The bricks were numbered.

And Elsie drew up this plan.

But then, none of that worked at all.  And the team just made it up as they went along.  Turns out clay between bricks takes space.  Who knew?

This frog came to help, too.  Not quite as handy with a trowel as Sahara, but darn close.

This guy came by as well, but, please, he was no help whatsoever.

 At this point, Angela, although smiling, was whining that the oven looked 'ghetto'.  She is a demanding thing.

Phil cleaned it up.

And it's practically perfect.

Now if this rainiest of rainy seasons would ever end, maybe he could get this baby finished.

Stayed tuned to see what happens...