repairing the bread oven and creating a patio

The large bread oven on the back of the gite has partially collapsed and is letting water into the structure of the building. The plan is to partially dismantle the collapsed sections at the top and create a patio on the base with a concrete roof/floor. This will seal in the oven and solve the damp problems and give the guests their own private area for barbeques etc.

The bread oven viewed from the back of the gite:

After many hours of dismantling stone by stone and brick by brick:

Many tons of earth as well as granite and bricks were removed and now you can see the inside of the oven:

The stone pile getting bigger:

Unfortunately the wall above the oven collapsed as it was supported by the stones we were removing(just missed my foot luckily :) You can now see the Granite lintel of the fireplace inside the main room from the outside! Bit of an oh sh*t moment but we just got on with the task of rebuilding the wall.

The wall rebuilt:

Stones almost removed down to the level of the roof of the bottom oven which will form the floor of the patio:

Next was to construct a shuttering from planks and screw it to the wall so it doesn't move under the weight of the concrete and use a damp proof membrane to keep the building dry..

We engineered a slight slope into the patio to make sure the water drains away from the wall. The concrete was mixed inside the cottage as we couldnt get the ballast and mixer out the back easily. Each mix was handed out of a window opening in the building and poured a bucket at a time.

Reinforcing steel was used to prevent cracking and we also added galvanised fence posts into the mixture so we can add a privacy fence later.

A tent was created from tarps in case it rained overnight. Much to my displeasure a cat walked over the new concrete before it dried :'(