The Base Revisited Day 2

So we started with 3 courses laid at the beginning of day 2. We started laying the next 2 courses before we took a break. Here are the pictures to show our progress for the morning.

You can see our son Charles getting his rest on our break. In the picture you can see the bricks on the ground. I found it easiest to lay out all 28 1/2 bricks for each course in advance so that I could grab and go to lay the next course. Then we would go back and back fill any gaps.
So here’s where we stopped for the day. Yes I can count and no there is not 7 courses. We laid 7 courses and found that we needed one more course in order to be able to level out the counter. It turned out that I only had 14 more bricks. Not enough for a whole course so I spaced out the bricks to wrap around most of the base. I left the back side of the dome open and under the bricks of the hearth open. I used the cob to fill in the gaps between the bricks, as well as to add a cap of cob around the back side of the oven. I also added a cap of cob where I plan on adding more red bricks for the hearth. At this point we called it a day.