Welcome to Del and Diane's

Outdoor Kitchen Project

Pictures:  Part II

The Pictures Page was getting large and would soon be taking too long to load, so I've broken it into two different pages for now (will probably add more as we go along to keep them a manageable size) so that those of you that are following along with us won't have to go back to the beginning every time. 

8/10/05  Well for starters, a couple of unrelated/kind of related pics for your amusement. 

We get these deer regularly. They'll eat almost anything, but especially love roses, jasmine, and fresh veggies.  If we want to have any of those, they have to be kept well fenced.  I grew up in Montana and find it pretty amazing that there, with deer and other animals all over the place, we never had to worry about a deer eating anything close to the house (they knew that instead of having dinner that they'd be dinner if they did), but here in the San Francisco Bay area with 10 million people around, we have to worry about the deer eating the roses and tomatoes!  They'll even eat jalapenos.  Go figure.

This pic is of the inside of Big Bubba about 5:00 PM Sunday afternoon. That's 15 slabs of baby back ribs, 40 chicken thighs, eight slabs of Alaskan Sockeye Salmon, and a big pan of beans. We had 35 people over for dinner to talk about planning for the fall for the ministry we're part of (you'll find a link to that on the personal links page soon). Yes, that's way too much food for 35 people.  Sent leftovers home with everyone and fed the crew working on the project for three days this week with them too. 

Big news on the project this week though is that the oven core is installed!!  This one and this one were taken Tuesday evening and show the dry fitting of the oven floor and entry arch onto the very flat, very level, 3" thick slab. :-)

Tuesday they also completed the round bar height counter for the end of the grill island so this is what things looked like at the end of Tuesday.

Today, Wednesday, 8/10/05 the oven core was completed.  The floor on the Mugnaini is a refractory material similar to a fire brick but with a very precise percentage of alumina.  It's quite porous so it will allow the steam from the bottom of a pizza to be absorbed quickly.  This allows the crust to become crisp rather than soggy.  The floor on the Mugnaini ovens are also completely enclosed within the dome, i.e. the dome of the oven sits on the concrete slab rather then on the oven floor.  This serves a couple of purposes, mainly that it traps heat better and if one ever needs to replace the floor tiles for any reason, that can be accomplished pretty simply through the opening without disturbing the dome.   This picture shows Boni from Golden Palm applying the refractory mortar to the seams of the oven. He's the lead mason on the project and an amazing craftsman; I marvel at his work.  He speaks only Spanish, and I speak only English, so we sometimes have challenges if we don't have an interpreter.  But we manage.  I'll bet he's great at charades.

Here you can see the masking tape that he put on the seams to make sure no mortar gets down into the joints.   A layer of the refractory mortar is put over all the seams on the dome as well as around the joint between the dome and the walls and the dome and the flue, but no mortar goes into the joints to allow for expansion and contraction with heating and cooling.

Here's how it looks completed with the arch also mortared to the front of the dome.   

This is a look inside the completed oven dome showing the very rough surface of the dome. This is another Mugnaini  design feature that helps the oven radiate a more uniform heat from the top.

That's about it for tonight.  Again, thanks for joining us on this journey.  Hopefully we'll be able to post the final pics in about three to four weeks.

Update 8/16/05.  Well, we're at that stage where all the infrastructure and core building blocks are in and the progress shows much more than it did before.

Here Boni and a helper put the insulation blanket onto the installed oven core. This is then followed by a parge coat of vermiculite and perlite mixed with mortar. The final thickness is about 4".  It adds material thermal mass to the oven without adding much to the preheat time.  Here is the completed application of the parge coat.. This shows the cavity where the oven core sits partially filled with vermiculite When the roof it completed, the cavity will be completely filled.

Here (l to r) are Marko (Ulisses' brother who is the foreman on our job), Ulisses, and Boni discussing the project. Boni started the stone work on the oven, and I was amazed at how fast it went.    He did the whole thing with one helper in less than one full day, and it's beautiful. Delfino is the tile man on the job.  Here he lays out the tile for the bare on the center island. Delfino's attention to detail is amazing.  This is how he handled the post anchor for the arbor. Again, all of Golden Palm's work just continues to exceed my expectations.  Two guys were crawling around inside all the islands for over a day simply to smooth a thin layer of stucco over the block to make the inside of the islands look more fiinished.

Well, I see the seat wall and planter footings being poured today and the roof going on the oven.  Stay tuned for more.  Hopefully, first fire in the oven this weekend and first party (which will be for the Golden Palm guys and their families; they've worked so hard on this project, we thought it would be nice for them to get to enjoy it for an evening and let their families see what they've been doing all summer) in three weeks.  Again, thanks for joining us on this project.