Our first summer project is complete and we couldn’t be happier with the result. We officially have made something both beautiful and functional.
BEFORE:
We had a couple of major problems that we noticed immediately when we bought this house. The first was that our retaining wall along our driveway badly rotted and the second was that we didn’t have a good place to put our garbage cans.
AFTER
To resolve the issues, we came up with a plan to replace the retaining wall and build a garbage blind at the top.
Please ignore the driveway dirt, our huge oak trees are dropping stuff constantly right now.
THE FULL STORY:
While we knew that the existing timber retaining wall was rotting and collapsing and needed to be replaced, we did not immediately know what we were going to replace it with. The obvious and simpler solution would have been to replace like for like, i.e. rebuild the timber wall with timber. I personally didn’t like that option. Timber walls are not long term solutions (although probably would have lasted for as long as we will own this house), and IMHO they don’t look good. And the currently outrageous lumber prices just sealed the deal. So masonry stones it is.
I know that tall masonry can be prone to failure, if not designed properly. That is why I reused the existing tiered design (Or pretty close). This also saved a *lot* of shoveling. By keeping it tiered, with only 5-6 rows of 4 inch blocks in each tier, I only needed to worry about providing good irrigation and would not need structural anchors.
As for irrigation, behind the base of each wall, i installed 4 inch plastic pipe. I found 100‘ of corrugated perforated drainage pipe that came in a fabric sleeve. I connected this to the existing downspout in the corner, ran it around the base of the upper wall until it connected to another pipe that ran from a drain I placed at ground level next to to driveway and ran along the base of the lower wall and then out down the hill behind the tree. I was sure that this pipe was placed on a bed of gravel, with gravel on top to keep dirt away from the perforations in the pipe.
I sourced the masonry blocks from Home Depot. The selection there was not great, but the blocks were what I needed. Later, I walked through the concrete block area at Menard’s, and I regret not looking there first. I could have ordered the block online and have it delivered, but the individual blocks are much cheaper in store. The additional price pays for the convenience and the significant cost of delivery. But Home Depot isn’t far from me, I wasn’t completely sure how much I would need, and I am not afraid of a little manual labor. I did make sure my Jeep could carry 600 pounds at a time. It still took me about 10 trips to get all the stone.
The blind on top is built with a pressure treated pine frame. It turns out I probably didn’t need to use treated wood, as it will be painted and isn’t in contact with the ground. I ordered 24” post stakes to provide a base for the 4x4 posts. If I had not used treated wood, we could have painted it immediately. As it is, we need to wait for 3-4 months to allow the wood to dray before we pant it. The wood slats are stained rough sawn pine wood. Sarah’s design called for 2-3 inch slats, but I could not find 1x3 rough sawn pine and Ifind it really hard to find decent (i.e. straight) 1x2. So I bought 1x6 rough sawn pine and ripped it in half. Then I stained each board before I cut each to the correct length. It is much easier to stain before it is up.
As for the gate, my first thought was to create two gates that opened french door style, but there are several problems with that. First, the weight of the gate would put a lot of pressure on the posts, and I was not going to have a support running above the gate. That can be fixed with a supporting wheel to carry the weight, which I eventually used on the single gate I ended up with. But the second problem with two gates is that there is not a place for the gates to close against. That can be solved with a metal stake that slides into a hole in the ground, but I don’t like that solution and we had no place to put a hole.
All in all, we are incredibly, pleased with the end result..
Comments