Not a Barn Raising but a Wall Raising

Bill and I were going to start on the little retaining wall down at the street. It is 95 square feet of block. As much as we would have liked to put in a natural rock wall we are getting to old to move those blocks so we went with concrete blocks.

This is where it is going. Lowe's delivered the blocks out to us. I saw the order desk write on the delivery form our exact location and the words, "Do Not Use GPS." Of course, the driver tried to get to us by using GPS. Had to interrupt a meeting I was in twice to give him directions.

Prep work is the most time consuming part of any project. The bottom level needs to be straight, level side to side and back to front.

Ran a string line to keep the wall straight. It was raised for each level to keep us straight.

Now it is time to dig out where the blocks go. You want your bottom blocks to be below grade level. This gives you wiggle room for leveling and it ties your wall into the ground.

Load of sand to use as our base. We are going to have lots of mason sand left over from our rock work. We are trying to find places to use it.

Good start on the wall.

My job was to dig the trench and keep Bill supplied with sand and blocks. He had the job of being on his hands and knees all day and building the wall.

We keep finding random poured concrete around the property. We found a huge piece that had been poured for some reason. It wasn't just buried 2 feet below grade it had been poured for a reason. There was no place for a post or anything. It was just in the way of the wall. Luckily, I have a world class strong man as a husband and he was able to break enough of it off for us to continue.

No explanation of why this would be here.

There was a void that needed to be filled so we put the concrete chunks there.

If we had waited another month we probably wouldn't have been able to dig our trench. We definitely have clay here. There was a three foot stretch I couldn't do. Bill had to get up off his knees and take my place at the shovel.

We could only go so far before needing to put landscape fabric behind the wall and back fill to give the wall stability. At one point I was putting the fabric behind the wall, bumped it and it became a leaning wall. Even after pulling it straight if you are being critical and eyeing the wall from the side you can see the spot.

We got to this point of the wall all by ourselves and then the Calvary arrived. Darrick had come over to work on Bill's pickup. Then Tiffany and the kids came. The boys filled in behind the wall until the lure of the Go-Kart and 4 Wheeler was too much and they had to go play.

Darrick's cousin, Jonathan, came over to discuss the pickup with Darrick and then his wife, Stephanie, and their two kids came. Suddenly they jumped right in and were building right along with us. Stephanie even had her cute sandals and too nice to be building a wall clothes on.

We really go going with all this help!

Yes, I can be a little cockeyed at times.

Even the little ones got in on the act. Brynnlee figured out what we were doing and found herself a hoe to pull together some dirt and put it behind the wall.