Sorry for my sporadic and mostly wordless posts lately! It's busy around my place these days. Work and family are the biggest priority right now as I go back to my "real job" from my summer off and my oldest gears up for Grade 1. Let's just say big changes are afoot not only in the garden!! And if you're hoping for more gardening and design tips, you'll just have to read my blog in the winter or go into the archives!
BTW, I finally went back and updated my winning gardens post and what's happening in my garden Aug 10.
But back to the wall - we had two days a week or so ago to get a big start on the retaining wall project. Here's what it looked like before we started.
So... how far did we get? Well, it took the first day just to clear the area to get ready to build the *&$% thing (I'm not frustrated, just tired!) Poor hubby had to dig out two tree stumps (the one below is still leftover from our Christmas tree harvest last year): plus the logs that formed the original retaining wall. Some of those suckers were huge and buried deep, too! And I'm not even going to mention the myriad of existing tree roots we also had to cut through to clear the area. Sometimes an established yard with lots of big trees doesn't seem as desirable as you might think...
Here he is at the end of the first day, poor guy! Does he look tired to you? But for me, I kind of enjoyed watching swinging his axe and pick around and getting all sweaty! Tee hee!
The second day's goal was to lay the foundation for the new brick wall and to get the first row of bricks put down. We didn't quite get that far.... The trouble was we had to dig a trench so that we could lay the bricks flat to figure out exactly where the curves were going to go, but we had to figure out where the curves were going to go so that we could dig and flatten the trench... You get the idea! A bit of a trial-and-error process. I was starting to wonder if we should have called a professional. But anyway, we sort of got it figured out eventually. I have to live with a few less curves than I originally planned, but at this point, I'm OK with that!
Here's where we got to by the end of the second day:
Phew! Remind me to never, ever do this again. Did I mention each of those bricks weighs 30 pounds?
Anyway, the babysitting is used up and now we're slowly getting the rest of the wall done whenever we have a moment or two. We've got 3 1/2 rows of bricks laid now, and the rest should get done this week-end, including backfilling. Then another week-end to fix the patio around the wall, and we'll be done... I hope!! Wish me luck.
That retaining wall will need rebar. Also, is that yardstone? That stuff can only go about five levels high.
Posted by: foo foo | August 24, 2009 at 08:34 PM