Whew. This retaining wall was quite the project for my husband to take on. The previous owners of our house did not construct the wall properly, so the weight of rain in a bad storm toppled the wall this past fall. After getting a few bids that all came in around $10,000, Ryan decided to do much of the work himself. This was rather shocking to me, since Ryan is not typically a do-it-yourself kind of guy. But I have to give my man props, because he spent the better part of 2 weeks in the backyard. Once he came up with his plan, he purchased many items, such as 16 tons of gravel, a couple truckloads of dirt and piping to create a drainage system. Here are some of the "beginning" pictures. As you see the project progress, keep in mind that every one of the cement blocks weighs 75 pounds, and were lifted individually without any help from the Bobcat.
The kids had a blast riding on the "tractor" with Ryan!
I could hardly stand to look out my back window every day, because the dirt and rock piles were rather unattractive.
After many, many hours of work, Ryan dug the earth back 5 feet to prepare for the rock.
That's an awful lot of blocks to lift and stack.
Then on the day before Thanksgiving, Ryan hired a crew of guys to help him finish the project. They worked from sun-up to sun-down, in the rain and severe fog, but got the wall built before dark.
The grass is rather torn up now. Logan asked me, "why did the big guys make a freeway in our backyard?" Tilling and re-seeding is a project that will wait until spring.
These kids were actually rather helpful! Brevan and another boy, Clayton, helped the men all day long and earned themselves some spending money.
He didn't get those muscles sitting on the couch all day.
Almost finished! Doesn't it look great? Check out the fabulous drainage system along the bottom! This is the last picture I took that turned out, because the fog and rain slammed these guys after this point. In fact, one of the workers wrecked his truck after he left our house because it was so foggy he couldn't see the road.
There is more work to do, since Ryan wants to create a drainage system on the top of the wall also, to divert water onto the slope at the back of our yard. But all in all, we figure we saved about $7500 by doing the project ourselves. My job was to be the moral support and cheer on my guy for working so hard. I'm so proud of him!
The kids had a blast riding on the "tractor" with Ryan!
I could hardly stand to look out my back window every day, because the dirt and rock piles were rather unattractive.
After many, many hours of work, Ryan dug the earth back 5 feet to prepare for the rock.
That's an awful lot of blocks to lift and stack.
Then on the day before Thanksgiving, Ryan hired a crew of guys to help him finish the project. They worked from sun-up to sun-down, in the rain and severe fog, but got the wall built before dark.
The grass is rather torn up now. Logan asked me, "why did the big guys make a freeway in our backyard?" Tilling and re-seeding is a project that will wait until spring.
These kids were actually rather helpful! Brevan and another boy, Clayton, helped the men all day long and earned themselves some spending money.
He didn't get those muscles sitting on the couch all day.
Almost finished! Doesn't it look great? Check out the fabulous drainage system along the bottom! This is the last picture I took that turned out, because the fog and rain slammed these guys after this point. In fact, one of the workers wrecked his truck after he left our house because it was so foggy he couldn't see the road.
There is more work to do, since Ryan wants to create a drainage system on the top of the wall also, to divert water onto the slope at the back of our yard. But all in all, we figure we saved about $7500 by doing the project ourselves. My job was to be the moral support and cheer on my guy for working so hard. I'm so proud of him!
1 comment:
Holy cow! That is a huge project. It's hard to see how big it is until you see the "tractor" beside it. My word, that was a big job...great job!!
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