fire!

I have some catching up to do on the oven progress. Nate's working much faster than I am.

This shows all the small purlin-like pieces of wood Nate had to add in order to have more places to put screws into from the roof. Each one was painstakingly hot-glued down until he could open the roof and screw them from the back. Both sides of the roof are hinged.

 Roof on.

 Ridge vent and chimney on.

 The roof is complete and the wiring for the lights and brakes is finished.

Baby's first fire! Over the next week or so, he'll be lighting a series of  'warming' fires to cure and dry out the masonry. The fires will be kept small and will be shifted around the hearth to try and heat the oven gradually and evenly. There's still a lot of water in the masonry, and if it gets too hot the steam will start to break joints, or worse, make cracks. This is what it means to "cure" a brick oven.

Now we can focus on the bakery itself. Things aren't moving along as quickly as we'd like with the bakery roof. That needs to happen before we can tackle the interior repairs and begin to get it ready for inspection. Unfortunately, we're at the mercy of the building owners and they have other obligations. Fingers crossed, we can get things moving before the snow starts to fly. We gotta get this baking party started!