The Great Wall - Day 4

No need to delay the inevitable. The Great Wall is complete! The wall part at least, nothing else.

Bask in the glory that is geometric patterns of form pressed stone composite material!

This past Saturday consisted of 10 hours of picking things up and putting them down. Only I had to glue said things and place them in an appropriate pattern. And by appropriate pattern I mean I had a basic pattern for something that isn't a wall and used that for the first half, then started to just put the stones wherever they fit for the second half. Still with glue. So moderately permanent, hopefully.

See all the squiggles of glue? That was a whole tube.

A pattern begins to emerge!

After spending many hours meticulously laying down the first course of stones and ensuring the straightity and levelitude, the rest of the stones went fairly quickly. Goes to show that doing proper prep work makes the rest of the job quicker. Hopefully I learned my lesson and apply this to my next projects. Although it looks like cleaning up from this one is going to be a project by itself. Wondering if I can just ignore it till it cleans itself up or if I could hire out for a sweet montage segment where it gets done in 30 seconds.

This came up when I did an image search for 'sweet montage cleanup segment'. Seems appropriate.

If you have to build a wall or some other type of stone based monument in your yard, I highly recommend these RumbleStone stones by the PaveStone Stone Company. Or the Stone Brewing Company, either will do. The stones all just fit together perfectly. Even when I went off pattern and started free forming the wall it still worked. Just make sure you have enough of each type of stone and you can build pretty much anything. If you build it, they will come.

Look at the patterns!

31.75 feet of perfectly fitted masonry.

The one thing to pay attention to however is to make sure you have enough landscape adhesive to get the job done. I drastically underestimated how much I would need, 3 different times. When I got my first set of supplies I figured 5 tubes would work. The tube said it would cover 31 feet and I assumed that meant 31 feet of wall, which is exactly how long my wall is. Well it meant 31 feet of goop, not wall. So after doing the first couple courses of stone and some of the columns I ran out and had to run to the home improvement store. This time I got a case of 12 to finish up. Figured that was plenty.

A few hours later I went back and got 6 more. That had to be enough.

Then I had to go back and get 4 more....

Finished the step with 1 tube left unopened.

Like the aftermath of a crazy party. 500 used tubes of adhesive, a plastic lawnmower and one empty beer bottle.

Once the wall was up and sufficiently glued together I had to put nice capstones on to make the wall look pretty. Apparently even walls have feelings. But then I had to build a step! What is a wall if you can't easily climb over it? My first idea was to build an inset step that went up to the patio. I had been wracking my brain about how I was going to do this as part of the wall without messing everything up. Then I had a brainstorm. Well, my brainstorm was to fret about it to my staff at work. That was all I needed though! One of my guys, Dan, said "Why don't you just build a step in front of the wall?"

He wasn't a free mason but I still requested his help.

That is why I hire A players for my team. Critical thinking skills that I lack. That makes me the best manager ever basically.

They love and adore me.

Yeah, if you could just come in on Saturday and build the patio for me, that would be great.

All I needed to do was take the stones I had left over and build a half wall step thing. Amazingly enough, I actually had left over stones. Back to the pre-planning part... I had guessed how many rocks I needed. Did some measurements and then just plain old guessed when I got to to the home improvement store. Amazingly I ended up with only 2 flat stones (which I promptly broke trying to chisel them in half), a handful of mini ones and probably more than my fair share of square ones. I was thinking that wasn't too bad but as I'm writing this I realize that I need to figure out what to do with those extra rocks... I'm sure I'll think of something. Maybe I'll put turrets on the wall. And a moat!

Trying the Flintstones method of writing this blog.

It isn't an exact science though....

Now that the wall is done I just need to deal with the ditches on either side of it. Link has gotten fairly adept at jumping over the ditch then using the small stair to get down to the yard. The Wee One isn't as lucky, nor as agile as the dog. With that the wall is really separating two different projects. On one side I need to till up the yard, level it, and then grow a new lawn. On the other side I need to build a patio. Both sides are huge projects that I have no idea how to do. But hey, if I can build a wall then I can build anything!

Can't decide between a joke about the tiny wheelbarrow or the spent adhesive tubes.

- The Porter -

The Great Wall - Day 3

The forecast was wrong! There wasn't any rain and that means no excuses for not building a Great Wall. This is the part where things start to get a bit dicey. Ripping down walls, moving rocks, those don't really take any particular sets of skills. Laying the foundation for a retaining wall and getting the first course of stones level.... that might need something. Not sure if I have that certain thing or not, but here goes!

Just like making the bed. Throw the sheets down  in a heap and when I get home from work the bed is made. Magic!

I researched how to do this on my phone while at the home improvement store for about 5 minutes. So I'm assuming that I'm an expert on this now. The first thing you are supposed to do is lay out this fabric stuff to keep the dirt away from the wall. The wall is the thing that is supposed to hold back the dirt.... I could have saved a lot of time and money if I just used this black sheet in the first place. The wife is concerned about 'aesthetics' and whatnot, so rock wall we go. There doesn't seem to be any skill to this portion, I just rolled it out and held it down with some bricks. Meh.

At this point I was considering just wrapping the whole thing up for a to go order.

Once my trench was dressed in its finest black frock I had to fill it, 'it' being the trench not the frock, with sand. Although technically I filled the both the frock and the trench with sand. We were still on the easy parts. I pushed the sand around and then put the level on it. Wicked Shocker Alert. It wasn't level. The yard is very, very non-level. I dug about 6 inches down in the ground and the bottom of the trench on the right (or left depending on where you are standing) side of the lawn is above the top of the lawn on the other side. We have a good 8 inch drop in the yard with a big bulge in the middle. Looks like I found my next project...

This is why you use the orange string!

Now we are getting into the skilled portion. If not skilled then at least the part that needs careful attention. A wall is only as straight and level as you make it. It is fine if it isn't totally straight or level, but all the stones need to be at the same straightification and levelness for it to work. Like a choir. Everyone needs to be singing together. Except the tenors, they can just be loud and awesome to make up for everyone else. However I can't have any tenor stones in this wall. One awesome stone that stands out and everyone looking at the wall and says:

"Man.... Look at that one stone there. It is the best stone out of all of these other untalented stones. Too bad it is too young and shouldn't be holding up that type of wall until it is well into its wall holding career. It could damage its ability to hold walls. No one wants an awesome stone for 25 years, we would rather have it sing art songs for 60 and be mediocre because we are full of ourselves and causing our industry to die."

Whoops, a little repressed resentment of the opera world came out there...

Nevermind, orange string isn't fixing s**t.

Oh yeah, I was talking about straightity and levelness. I brought the string back! Tied a nice orange piece of string to two sticks and strung it out along the pit. High tech I know, but it gave me a line to line the stones against. I saw a picture of this at the home improvement store, so I know this is what I needed to do. This should ensure that the wall is at the very least going in one direction.

At least the wall isn't going Bieber. I would have to torch the whole house and salt the earth.

With the combination of sand and stones, luck and sweat, cursing and crying, I was able to get a full course of stones down! Night had fallen, it was a cold and dark night, full of mystery and intrigue, and I was using the light of my cell phone to see the level for each individual stone that I set, but by God I was going to finish that whole run before the night was through. Determination!

That end is above ground.

This end is below! Magic!

As you can see I also put some columns on the ends of the wall. The columns can be little plant holders or something. Most likely they will just be places where the Wee One climbs up and jumps off. I won't make them too high. Or whatever, he has to learn somewhere. I never broke anything jumping off stuff when I was little. Sprained my ankles a ton but if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger. Or makes your ankles weaker so you fall to the ground if there is a piece of gravel on the road and you step on it. Either way. Also I need to put stairs somewhere in there.

Now that I see the picture full size and not on my phone I realize that it slopes to the left.... Crap...

Now that this first course is done I think the rest should go faster. This first set is all level and straight so the blocks on top should, theoretically, follow suit. The best thing about these stones, no mortar needed! It uses landscape adhesive to hold everything together. So I will literally be gluing rocks together to make a wall that should hold up the patio and the back of my house. Seems legit.

- The Porter -