Whew.

Well the kiln building didn't go exactly as planned but everything worked out in the end. Everyone came over Memorial day weekend as planned and we got started right away on building it only to realize after a day's work that it wasn't going to work. The slab wasn't level and it was affecting everything. Aaron had laid the slab and kept saying it wasn't right but I thought it would be fine. Well, he was right... so we took everything down and had to start over. I felt bad that I had everyone come over only to put up half a kiln and take it down again, but they were really cool. Thanks Jo, Trish and Vicki!

Then everything went smoothly for a while. Until we got to the arch... we had a load of trouble because the iron we were trying to use was way too thin and was bowing out under the added pressure of hard brick. Aaron, Trish and I rebuilt the arch 3 times and it kept sagging before we figured it out. I had underestimated the affect the added weight would have on the frame. Anyway I had to go get heavier metal and we were able to get the arch to hold! Hooray! I'm still having a welder come tomorrow and reinforce the frame to hold the load, he's going to drill into the concrete and add more iron supports on the sides.

So this was definitely a learning experience and took way longer than I planned but hopefully it'll be worth it.

Aaron's Dad came out on Sunday and they've been working like dogs since then. It's been really hot and humid here all week too.

So far they've built a shelter for the side of the kiln shed to keep rain out, put in a new mailbox, put in gutters and now they're working on a screen porch. Huge help! Thanks Ken. I'm really looking forward to hanging out on that screen porch. Aaron goes in for his surgery on his hand on Friday so he'll be out of commission for about six weeks.

Kiln Planning.

Nothing like a deadline to get things going. We set the date a couple of weeks ago and this weekend we're gonna build a kiln, with a little help from my clay friends, Jo, Trish and Vicki.

I built it in my head a couple of times and laid it out on paper, then I read in a book to use legos to build a model. At first I thought it was a little goofy but I found some legos up in the attic and gave it a try. I soon realized it was a really good idea to work it out in legos instead of 8 pound bricks. Next thing you know I was ordering legos online because I didn't have enough. I built and rebuilt this little model three times now. I'm basically going with the same kiln as last time except a little bigger so I won't have to fire as often, and I'm changing the ports a little to make the soda more even.

So far we've got the pad laid (Gertie took a little stroll through the wet concrete), the shed area cleaned out and gravel down so it isn't so muddy, and the hole cut in the roof for the chimney. And I've started moving bricks over to the site, that's going kinda slow. Here's a picture of one of the pallets of new bricks, you can see the big floor bricks on the corner there. The big pieces are supposed to be more stable according to the brick guy, man they're heavy.