First, buy a pizza oven. Then, find a place to stand it. Do you want to know how to make your own pizza oven stand? It could be a good move when the stands available in the shops are either good quality but super-expensive, cheap and flimsy, really ugly, or won’t fit where you want them to go. Let’s explore how to make your own pizza oven stand.
If you’d love to join in with the nation’s summer of DIY pizza fun, grab yourself one of the best quality traditional pizza ovens available. Give the Pizzaro pizza oven a go. It’s brilliant. Then figure out how to make a stand you can be proud of. Here’s how, including some handy videos from YouTube.
Simple ways to make your own pizza oven stand
This idea is perfect for people with not much DIY experience – or none. Anyone can make one of these basic structures. The simple design is versatile enough for a bit of creativity if you’re up for it. The stand is really easy to put together and you can customise the end result. It’s basically a big, tough chunk of breezeblocks with a nice, flat top.
A very simple pizza oven stand in 6 steps
- Figure out the perfect height for cooking. If your kitchen oven is at a good height for you, make your pizza oven stand the same height. Make it too high or low and it’ll be awkward getting the fuel and food in and out
- Gather your materials: lightweight breeze blocks to stack up to the right height, flagstones or one large flagstone for the top, and a spirit level to check it’s flat
- If the place you want the oven to stand isn’t solid, for example on loose or damp soil instead of a patio, you’ll need to create a strong concrete base for it. There’s plenty of help about that side of things online and it’s a reasonably simple job. It’s worth doing since a wonky oven is annoying to use and looks bad. If you’re confident the bare earth can take it and won’t slump, build on top of that
- Because lightweight breezeblocks are actually quite heavy as well as textured, there’s no need for cement. Just stack them carefully on your flat surface until you get a big, chunky base that’s the right height, width and depth. Keep checking everything is level. Bear in mind the size of your pizza oven and make a space bigger than its footprint with nothing dangling over the edge. The Pizzaro measures 107cm high, 120cm wide, 72cm deep
- Think cooking, too. Will you need some extra surface space for your cooking kit and ingredients, or will you use a table at the side for all that?
- Place your flagstone or flagstones on top. Then check they’re perfectly level. Now you’re ready to assemble your pizza oven on top and kick off a fun new obsession. Alfresco pizza? Heaven!
Substitute the breezeblocks for railway sleepers or bricks and you’ll get the same effect, a big, bold, chunky stand with a completely flat surface for your oven to stand on.
Now for the creative bit. Given time and the great British weather, the breezeblocks and surface will acquire a nice worn look that’ll fade back against your garden. But until that happens, raw breezeblocks look pretty awful. You’ll probably want to improve the look of your home-made pizza oven stand rather than wit to see if it develops a nice patina. Here are some simple ideas.
Decorating your pizza oven stand
Breezeblocks are basically masonry, which means masonry paint is a fun, fast way to make your pizza oven stand look good. Because it’s made of blocks, you have ready-made outlines to follow. Maybe paint each block a different shade. Or paint it in either vertical or horizontal stripes. Think about your favourite football team – paint it in their home or away colours if you like, great fun for a family of sport nuts.
A plain paint job looks lovely. Choose a colour to make the greens in your garden pop – a deep purple, a rich aubergine, a vivid scarlet. Paint it green and it’ll sit back against the planting, losing its definition for a subtle look.
Clay paint is another wonderful product, with its tough good looks and stylish finish. How about one of the gorgeous heritage colours we’re seeing so much of at the moment, a symphony in subtle greys, creams and browns? Or just go for matt black and make the whole thing disappear, a nice visual trick. If you paint it white, by the way, it’ll stand out like a sore thumb – fine if that’s what you want.
You could even mosaic your pizza oven stand, a big favourite of ours as you’ll already know if you’re a fan of our blog. Just grab some good quality external adhesive and grout. Alternatively either fix seashells over the front with exterior tile adhesive or push them into a 2cm layer of thick, quick drying cement for a funky Victorian grotto effect. You don’t need to grout it.
You could use pretty slate chips, the flat ones, as mosaic if you want. Just stick them into a layer of cement plastered onto the blocks. Again, there’s no need for grout.
YouTube videos to help you make a pizza oven stand
YouTube has some great videos to help you create a more complicated pizza oven stand. Take a look at these and see what inspires you. They’re all suitable for people with decent DIY skills.