The Sunfower Pizza Oven

Well, it's (mostly) done! I think my part is done anyway. 

The backstory on this is that my best friend has a house on a Chesapeake Bay tributary and recently her husband and BIL built a nice brick grill worstation with a pizza oven on one end. Anne has been wanting to mosaic it ever since it was finished. She finally poked me enough that we picked last week to get started. The Mexican tiles were leftover from my mosaic collection and they had been gifted to me by another friend. There are so many tiles that we could probably mosaic 2 more pizza overs, but we are not going to! She bought the background tiles from a reclamation place in Richmond. They are basically  tiles from 50's era bathrooms.

The design process started with her deep dives into Pinterest and some really complicated ideas. I reminded her that neither of us could draw and the we didn't have a palette that would work for most of her big ideas. I did some quick searches for "mosaic Mexican tiles" and found a really cute sunflower idea. It was well within our skills to trace around a bowl for the centers and the rest was easy.....as easy as mosaic can be. It took the better part of 2 full days to do the tile work.

​The nightmare was (and always is) the grouting.

Chris went with me Monday night because he was going to hang out with the dog while we grouted but, luckily, he got bored and came out to help. We would have never finished without him. Working solid starting at about 8:30 on the hottest day of the year, we finished a little before 4. Anne had a conference call and we needed to get home.  She will have some touch up grouting and  will need to seal it. Then she will be able to take down the tent and get some glamour shots. All-in-all we are really happy with it. 

I ended the day with 6 fingers bandaged and with multiple cuts on each but pleased with the project. As you drive down the driveway to her house this will be the first thing you see.

We did this little bonus project at the end of her driveway. The original builders of the house put  2 of these light poles at the end of the driveway and put a hideous tile (picture of a castle) in it. I don't know what a castle has to do with this particular house or this location so you can imagine how much my friend hated it. A little sun image to go with the sun at the top of the pizza oven chimney seemed perfect. It's a huge improvement.

If I ever mention mosaics again please remind me of the torturous grouting on this project.