The Great Wall - Day 2

3 Hours.

4 Pallets.

176 Trips.

600 Stones.

7500 Pounds.

By. Hand.

*flex*

They look a lot bigger than they did on the magazine. Also a lot heavier.

Yesterday we received the delivery of the stones to build the Great Wall with. Helpfully they were delivered right into our driveway. That meant 7500 pounds of stones needed to be moved, by hand, before we could park our cars again. No rest for the weary, home from work and onto manual labor!

Tried to contact this group for help but I couldn't find their number in the yellow pages.

Why by hand you ask? Well because I needed to get the stones down the house, then down a 2 foot drop from another retaining wall, then over to another pallet near the Great Wall. I could have used a wheelbarrow but that would have involved filling the barrow, moving it 20 feet, emptying it, moving the barrow down the terrace, refilling it, moving it 10 feet, emptying it. That seemed like more work at the time, so I opted for 176 trips back and forth with between 2-10 stones in my arms.

Halfway through pallet #2 I started rethinking a lot of the life choices I've made that got me here.

The exciting thing about these stones is that they, like I keep telling the wee one, are pretty much big boy Legos. They are all different sizes, but the dimensions add up so that you can just stack them in different directions and get a nifty design. I got some of your large rectangles, your small rectangles, your flat rectangles, and also some of your traditional square type rocks. Not sure what quarry they found with these magical beasts, but nature is amazing.

I've been training for this project as well. Play more video games kids, they prep you for life.

All in all, I did not accomplish much. An entire day of the project, well only 3 hours, spent entirely on moving the supplies. Moving them a grand total of about 10-15 meters. On top of that I ache. Not like a great workout type of ache, or when your high school sweetheart breaks your heart type of ache. The type of ache where sleeping hurts. Driving to work hurt. Even my hands hurt typing this. All that pain and suffering just so that I can have the stones closer when I have to build the wall. Pain and suffering and it didn't even lead to dark side Force powers. :( Had that happened, moving the rocks would have been a ton easier.

I'm no structural engineer, but that looks safe enough to me.

Assuming the forecast is incorrect and it doesn't rain for the next few days, this wall is going up. Of course if, for once, they got it correct... I'm fairly confident that rain combined with 7500 extra pounds of weight on the terrace are going to topple over lawn into the neighbors. It will be the fastest land grab in history.

- The Porter -

The Great Wall - Day 1

Warm weather and birds chirping. That can only mean that Spring has sprung! I guess it can't only mean that one thing, because it also means that it is time to get back to Porterhouse Projects^TM! We took the winter off mostly because it was flipping cold and we were buried under 8 feet of snow for a good 2 months. Now that it has melted we are back in action. The first project of the year, replacing the old rotted retaining wall in the back yard!

Even the Wee One's fake plastic lawnmower is overcome with this job.

This was not my first choice of project for the year but really one that was forced on me due to planning. We need to redo the upstairs bathroom and tile the front entry and dining area. Before I do that we need to replace the temporary jacks with permanent supports in the basement so that new tile doesn't crack due to shifting. Need to hire a dumpster to clean out all the crap in the basement before we can navigate it easily to replace those posts. Have to pull up the old retaining wall first so that we can throw the rail ties away in the rented dumpster. Have to wait for the snow to melt before we... and so on. With the amount of work travel that I'm doing, I have to get a jump on these projects now if I want to finish them this year. I mean, I can't always be in Ireland.

Lies, I totally could be there all the time.

I try to put a paragraph in between each set of pictures. It helps with the balance of the post. However I didn't do anything in between this and the last set of pictures... Ummm... Worky worky, I went to Ireland again. I didn't do any projects all winter. Purple monkey dishwasher.

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That should be good.

I tried to contact the owner, they appear good at digging and could help me out.

Alternately Mother Nature is more than capable, she just doesn't like to work on a fast schedule.

Aside from the fact that most of the ties are hollow with rot, housing the carpenter ant hives that provide our yearly swarm and who knows what else, last fall something(one?) dug underneath one of the stairs. Pretty sure it was the dead rat that I found inside one of the ties but I wasn't taking any chances. The hole looks larger than a rat though...Maybe the dreaded Rat King.

If only he was as graceful in death as I chucked him over the fence into the neighbors yard.

The (only) nice thing about rotted wood is that it makes the demo a lot easier. I was able to get the first course of ties up fairly quickly. They just kind of fell over like a barbarian who comes out of his battlerage to learn that he has lost all his blood, they gave up their final sigh and fell to the earth. Well they fell after I picked them up from the earth and put them on the pile with their dead brethren.

Ahh my good friend tetanus, we meet again.

Pictures are worth 1000 words. All of those words are 'rot'.

It was the ones buried a bit that gave me the trouble. All old and stuck in their ways. First, these ties are old hard wood. The rotted bits had turned to soil, but the non-rotted parts were hard as steel. Chopping with an axe barely made a dent in it. However, I hacked away because I bought an axe and I was damn well going to use it. After not chopping them in half though, 8 feet of waterlogged rail ties are very heavy to move. They also had grown roots somehow and were holding onto the earth as though saying 'I don't want to go', before not regenerating and being heaved onto a pile.

I'm a lumberjack and that's ok.

There actually is a log in there, I'm not just chopping dirt.

Once the majority of the ties were up I dug a nice trench where the new wall is going to go. The lawn slopes slightly to the side, so I will need to make up for that by, well I have no idea but I'll figure it out. Dirt will play a major role I'm sure. I also tied a string to make it look like I was planning, but it didn't help.

We are (mostly) ready to begin the wall transplant Doctor.

Overall it was a good start to a project. I have 4 pallets of stones being delivered sometime this week, so the building will begin soon. Until then the wee one is passing the time by digging up the piles of dirt and putting them back in the hole that I am trying to dig out and the poor dog can't make it across the canyon. Also it is supposed to rain soon, so I'm sure the whole yard is going to wash away by the time I'm ready to start building. #OhGood 

However we had Chinese food that night and my fortune cookie sums it up the best:

No it didn't, Mr. Fortune Cookie Translator. No it didn't.

- The Porter -




P.S.

The little Porter helping out, when not refilling the hole I was digging.