The Great Wall of Quarantine

R wanted a retaining wall. And I wanted to avoid the pitfalls I'd seen others make constructing their own. Thanks to those first particularly strange few weeks in the Spring of 2020 where the whole world seemed to stop, we were not able to hire a team to make it happen. That's how R and I ended up building our own.

The retaining wall that R envisioned would solve several problems by stopping vehicles from encroaching, unobstructed, deep into our yard. It would protect our playing children from said vehicles by providing a naturally understood safe zone and barrier. And it would eliminate the standing water and resulting bug issues by limiting the opportunity for deep ruts to be made by careless drivers. My additional requirement was that it add to the curb appeal of our home, not diminish it. I wanted it to tie in with what was already present in our neighborhood and yard. The city has constructed a small segment of retaining wall on the corner of our property when they installed sidewalks along the main street, so my hope was to match that as closely as possible.

I called the city and after being passed from one employee to another, was finally connected with someone who had knowledge of the previous work done. He told me he would email any details he could pull up, and shared that the work had been done 12 years beforehand. I waited for the information and held my breathe, hoping that I'd be able to find something similar still on the market. To my delight, after learning they'd used a stone product called, Versa-lok, I quickly found a supplier in our city. Next I called to ask details about the product, and learned that the color options had changed over the previous decade. So I decided to head to their facility to pick up samples to compare with what we had in the neighborhood.

I placed the options on top of the existing wall and compared them while dry and wet to find which I thought would match best overall. I realized then that a good power wash might help make the best match. Man, what a difference that made! The corner looked a tad less like its opposing corners, but would much better match what we were about to install. I measured where we wanted the wall to go and did some basic math using the dimensions of the stones to determine how many blocks I needed, how many top caps I needed, and how much gravel would be required. Proper drainage is important for retaining walls to ensure their structural integrity and to avoid unintended new issues.  I decided to buy enough larger gravel for a 6 inch base layer and enough fine gravel for a 3-4 inch top layer under the wall. I still wasn't prepared for hearing that my order meant 9 tons of rock were being sent to my house.

I was determined at this point to do this whole project myself. R was loaded down with work and I loved the idea of making this happen without bothering him. That plan evaporated after digging about 6 feet of the trench. I tapped out, but quickly knew I'd made the right choice. He made quick work of the task, that at my previous rate felt like would have taken me days to complete. Once we (really, R, but I did a little and a neighbor who stopped over with additional tools did a little, too!) had the trench done, it was time to lay the gravel. The slowest part of this for me was loading up the wheelbarrow to take gravel down the length of the yard. (R helped tremendously with this, as well, as it did not take him nearly as long to load the gravel I needed). At this point we called it a day.

The next day, R came to the rescue again and helped me move the stones, which weighed 77 pounds each, across the yard so that as I placed them there would always be some nearby that I could use. I positioned them by hand, using feel and a level, and while the wall was straight to the eye, a small angle from laying the first stone slightly askew meant that I wasn't happy with the wall about half way down the yard. It wasn't going to make it to my desired end point. I tore it apart and started over, this time with a string tied tightly from my start to end point for reference. Now the slowest part was properly packing down the gravel and making it perfectly level. Another neighbor had saved me from having to make a trip to buy my own tamper, which significantly sped up my progress, but it was frustrating to have to start the process over after my mis-start. I was only making the wall one layer tall, so after completing that layer and being happy with it this time, I lined up the significantly lighter (38 pounds each) cap pieces, and again decided that I'd hit my one day limit for work.

I'd planned to use an adhesive to complete the wall the next morning. It was great luck I hadn't done it before, because that morning we'd received a no-no note from the city. Someone had complained about us doing un-permitted work. No more work could be done. The city was great, and ultimately this led to an improvement to the project, but it killed our schedule and turned what we'd planned on being a 3 day project into one that ultimately took well over a month to complete. We'd arranged for childcare with this project in mind for those three days, so we weren't free to complete it again whenever we wanted without planning ahead, and it did take time to work through with the city itself. This threw off our dirt delivery schedule, which threw off our grass planting schedule, which threw off our walkway schedule, which ate the cat, that ate the rat, that lived in the house... you get the picture. We decided to go ahead with Step 3 while we waited. Watching my husband wield a jack-hammer? Step 3 was my favorite.

Ultimately the city engineer asked that we abandon the wall to the right of our driveway, and that we shorten our main wall and angle it to meet the existing stone from the city install. Angle? Huh. Yeah, I could see that it would solve her problem (the wall being too close to the corner and people not wanting to hit it - to which I wished I could say, "perhaps they should be expected to stay on the road?", but I digress) and it would actually be much more visually appealing. However, laying a straight wall is a significantly easier task than one with an angle and I was (appropriately) nervous. I bought the most serious diamond blade I could find for R's circular saw, and proceeded to demolish it immediately while making zero progress on cutting the 2 stones necessary to make the wall angle back as needed. Yet another saintly neighbor came to my rescue. He happened to own a commercial building company, and offered to bring home a Partner saw and help me with the cuts. It was an offer that I readily accepted. I, essentially, sat back and watched as he cut both pieces, but I was horrified at how difficult it was. Versa-lok stones are no joke. I may make my next house entirely out of them after witnessing their strength first hand. Once the cuts were made, I laid out the remainder of the stones and finally began gluing down the caps.

R and I had no need for the gym that month. Every muscle in my body ached. The city engineer stopped by to inspect the work and make sure it matched what we'd agreed upon. She jokingly offered to hire me for any future installs the city had, and I responded firmly, "I think I'm one-and-done on retaining walls." I was. And I still am. But we did it! On to part 4 of R's master-quarantine-front-yard-make-over plan.