My biggest project this spring has been constructing a retaining wall in the backyard. Up until now, it's been 86 years that the lawn in this house's backyard has poured into the neighboring house's backyard. Throughout the years, occupants have done a lot, it seems, to try and retain the
dirt--everything except build a retaining wall. I pulled all kinds of stuff out of the earth, including metal poles, old plywood, steel cables, pieces of corrugated metal, large sheets of
asbestos, and even an old door, which still included the vintage octagonal glass knob and mortise set... score! For the wall, I chose to
use the large pre-formed concrete blocks from home depot. The pink flavor. Not my favorite looking thing in the world, but a lot better then it looked before :-) All in all, the project took a month in a half, working only on my days off, and the wall consists of 240 60lb. blocks. Perhaps the most difficult part of the project was cutting through all the bamboo roots that span the hill where I wanted to build the wall. I learned a lot about the bamboo plant in the process. Mainly that the whole bamboo forest is one big plant, with the same root system. Luckily, cutting the root system does not harm the plant, and it will continue to grow as many different plants when cut into sections.. Also, during spring, when new shoots emerge, they can grow in excess of 20 inches in a day. Not kidding! The wall is now complete, and we're beginning to plot the layout of our zen cactus garden. Here's the wall from above, and from below:
My biggest project this spring has been constructing a retaining wall in the backyard. Up until now, it's been 86 years that the lawn in this house's backyard has poured into the neighboring house's backyard. Throughout the years, occupants have done a lot, it seems, to try and retain the
dirt--everything except build a retaining wall. I pulled all kinds of stuff out of the earth, including metal poles, old plywood, steel cables, pieces of corrugated metal, large sheets of 
asbestos, and even an old door, which still included the vintage octagonal glass knob and mortise set... score! For the wall, I chose to
use the large pre-formed concrete blocks from home depot. The pink flavor. Not my favorite looking thing in the world, but a lot better then it looked before :-) All in all, the project took a month in a half, working only on my days off, and the wall consists of 240 60lb. blocks. Perhaps the most difficult part of the project was cutting through all the bamboo roots that span the hill where I wanted to build the wall. I learned a lot about the bamboo plant in the process. Mainly that the whole bamboo forest is one big plant, with the same root system. Luckily, cutting the root system does not harm the plant, and it will continue to grow as many different plants when cut into sections.. Also, during spring, when new shoots emerge, they can grow in excess of 20 inches in a day. Not kidding! The wall is now complete, and we're beginning to plot the layout of our zen cactus garden. Here's the wall from above, and from below: 
1 comment:
Great Work on all your projects. I can recommend... get the structural done first. Do the pretty stuff later. Nice job.
John
blog.gizmodyne.com
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