It just occured to me today that I have like 5 outdoor projects going on at once around the house. Admittedly, it looks a little rough right now. I tore it all down at once and am taking my time doing a little bit on each project to build it up. I’m sure my neighbors are shitting bricks – especially the guy trying to sell. But the beaty of my madness is that one day it’s all just going to come together and be done and look damn good…or at least a helluva lot better than the last owners had things going.

This past weekend’s project was the retaining wall at the corner of the house. I’ve already dug out every last plant, so in order to move forward with the landscaping redux, I need to rebuild the wall to something decent. The old wall was downhill and dick shaped. It served no purpose. My new wall will be round and level – like a retaining wall should be. We scored an el cheapo wheelbarrow to move bricks – it made it both easier and faster and got to ripping apart the old stone wall and then headed out and bought bricks (blocks?) to begin the new wall. We had no idea how many we were going to need so we decided to start with 50 just to see how far that got. We knew that number was nowhere close to the final number, but we figured it’d be a good start and give us an idea. Plus 50 bricks and a couple bags of leveling sand fit perfectly in the back of the HHR…and trashed it. So much for my pimp little station wagon.

I think the bulk of the hard work is handled. Digging and leveling the bottom row is key to the whole thing and is worth the time and effort. After that it’s just stacking bricks and digging any additional bricks into higher levels as we work up the hill. Still ass kicking work, but a little less time consuming. So here’s the before and after:

Before:
Wall

And the first 50 bricks (44 actually) after:
Wall

That’s at the lowest side of the wall. It’s all up from there. I figure I’ll need to go six high on the blocks. I’d actually like to go 7 or even 8, but the blocks just don’t stack that high and the manufacturer recommends six maximum. So creative staggering to drop those two rows will work just fine. I think we’ll grab another 100 or 150 this weekend and see how much closer that gets us to the end of the wall.