Building the arch

We spent Sunday morning building the arch. I had so much anxiety about getting in the boxes and actually being able to remember how we had numbered that bricks and how it would all go back together. It went very smoothly and I was so happy that we had documented so much from when we took the kiln down. Also I had numbered every brick with so many "keys"that it really helped. Here is photo of the back of the kiln with the bricks in place as well as the arch form. We only had a few bricks up around the key brick that had to be re-cut and shaped for them to fit perfectly and tight.

( Trying to put a kiln together with three kids around was challenging, as you can see with the care bear that had to be in the photo. Lots of little hands trying to open boxes, hand us bricks out of sequence and shave bricks on the side of the cinder blocks.)

Here are the kids making some sort of "witches brew" with old spices from the cupboard and other things they could find outside. I was letting them do pretty much anything just to keep them out of our hair and happy while we were doing all this. All in all we survived the juggling between the two!