This will be a long post. You may wish to fetch some coffee. I’ll wait.
This is a story about a man, a retaining wall, and how you–especially if you are a husband–can learn from my mistakes.
Stage One: Before
This is what the backyard looked like before I moved into the house. That right-hand back corner is deceptively good-looking. It’s actually a wickedly steep slope.
I ignored this slope for years. When it needed trimming, I put it off as long as possible. When I did have to trim it, I tilted the mower at a 45-degree angle and tried my best, then used the weed-whacker to get the rest.
But then I got married, and Kelly helped me see that the yard didn’t have to be left the way it was. We decided to put in a retaining wall to turn the difficult slope into a useful planting surface. I figured it’d take a couple of weekends or so and it would be a fun project.
Stage Two: Surveying
The next step was planning the retaining wall. I got some sticks and string, like the cavemen used when they planned their retaining walls. I tried a couple of ideas for the wall by moving the sticks and string around. I measured out a stair-step approach and eventually settled on a single-level design.
I went to the library and checked out a bunch of books. It turns out that building a wall is not as simple as throwing some rocks against a slope. You have to worry about stuff like permits and drainage. I sketched out a detailed plan, measured the yard, and ordered materials.
Stage Three: Holy Cow, Materials.
I scheduled the materials to arrive on a weekend Kelly would be out of town. Wouldn’t it be great for her to come back to a finished wall? Exciting!
When the trucks came with the materials, they left them on the driveway, because there’s no way to get to the backyard with any kind of heavy machinery. As they drove away, I stared at the pile of stuff.
“That’s a lot of stuff,” I thought. It was at this moment, staring at the immense sea of rocks blocking access to the garage, that I realized that the project might take longer than I had thought. (I later did some math and found out that I had ordered 19 tons of rocks and building materials.)
Some generous friends came over to help me. We worked most of the day in the hot sun; friends came and went but I kept at it. Near the end of Day One, we were making some serious progress:
And by “serious progress,” I mean “we moved almost all the raw materials into the backyard.” This brings us to Lesson 1: when planning a project, do more than just count the cost. Weigh the weight, too.
Stage Four: Trenches
A retaining wall is kind of like a house. You can’t just build it on some dirt. It needs a bit of a foundation. The next stage was digging a trench to contain the foundation for the first level of the wall. It took me several evenings just to finish moving the materials and dig this trench, and I realized at this point that I had not signed up for just a couple of weekends of work.
I had started something bigger.
I had started the Yard Project of Doom.
Stage Five: Foundation and Fabric
Once the trench was finished, I lined it with landscape fabric and filled it with crushed rock. There are basically two kinds of rock needed for this kind of project. One kind is rocks with lots of smaller rocks, all the way down to sand-sized pieces. This is the kind used for the foundation. The other kind is consistently sized pebbles. Those are used for drainage. You’ll see them later!
Stage Six: Um, These Corners Could Be Trouble
This is a problem I didn’t anticipate but thankfully considered before I began laying bricks permanently.
You probably can’t see it, but every one of those bricks has 3/4″ lip on the back. This accomplishes two purposes.
One, it helps them stay in place.
Two, it ensures that clueless do-it-yourselfers don’t try to stack the bricks in a straight vertical line. A retaining wall of this kind is held in place by gravity, so the bricks have to lean back against the hill.
The problem with a wall that leans into the hill is that every layer of the wall makes a slightly tighter turn around the corners than the previous layer. If your first layer contains the tightest turn your bricks can make, the second layer simply won’t fit.
I spent an evening just stacking rocks in various ways and measuring the gaps so I could create consistent corners. Some might call this OCD. I call it quality workmanship.
Stage Seven: Laying Bricks and Backfilling
At this point, the project was stretching into the “months” category. It was time to put some bricks in their final position. I was extremely excited to do this. Extremely excited.. This photo is taken from the top of the hill, looking towards the house.
After every layer of bricks, I backfilled with the drain gravel. I rejoiced with every shovelful, because I ordered too much of the stuff and wanted to get rid of as much of it as I could. Plus, the huge pile had been sitting in the backyard for a long time now.
Stage Eight: Level One Complete
Once I was able to lay bricks, the project went very quickly. Soon, the entire first level of the wall was finished. In the evenings, I would peek out at my handiwork frequently to admire it. It wasn’t exactly a perfect wall but, by golly, I’d built it with my own two hands!
Stage Nine: The Hardest Part
Do you know what the hardest part of a project is? It’s the part where the initial thrill of possibility and accomplishment has faded and you realize how much work there is left to do. Kind of like how you started reading this blog post and thought “Wow, this is going to be great” and by now you’re thinking “actually, I should just scroll to the end and see if he even finished.” Fine, go ahead. I won’t blame you.
For the Great Retaining Wall Project, the hardest part happened right around the time this picture was taken.
The first level of the wall had been built kind of next to the hill. Now it was time to actually decimate the hill itself to make way for Level Two. It was late summer by this point and the dirt was dry, dusty, and hard as rocks. And full of rocks, too. I slogged away at the hill with a borrowed pickaxe.
Stage Ten: No, I’m Not Kidding, It Actually Was The Hardest Part
I used the pickaxe for a long time. Even though I wore gloves, the joints in my hands and wrists tingled and ached for months afterwards from the impact. It felt like tinnitus but in my fingers. That soil was hard. But I was not going to be beaten by the hill.
And I had help! Throughout the project, my two brothers-in-law proved invaluable. Everyone should collect a few brothers-in-law if they can. They are very useful around the yard and you don’t even have to pay them.
Erik (the one with the big muscles) actually swung the axe into the hill so hard that it broke in two.
Stage Eleven: Building It Twice
Everything that was done for the first wall–digging the trench, laying the fabric, adding the foundation, stacking bricks, backfilling, etc.–had to be done again for the second level.
The second level took less time, both because I had more experience and because I was starting to worry about the time. What had started as a summer project was running dangerously into autumn territory. I made it my goal to finish before the rains came.
Stage Twelve: Finished At Last
That’s right! Finished at last! And just in the nick of time, too. This is more or less the state in which I left the project for the winter.
I can’t tell you how happy I was to be done. I’d worry about those “last little details” next year.
Stage Thirteen: The Dirt Problem (You Mean Hard Clay Isn’t Good For Planting?)
This image offers a sobering view of what happens when you neglect your project for an entire winter and part of a spring.
The dirt inside the wall was not good for growing anything. It was incredibly hard. Not like “needs a little turning with a shovel” hard. More like “requires a pickaxe to break the surface” hard. Water just pooled up and ran off.
So I did what anyone would do in this situation. I got out the pickaxe and started shoveling the lousy dirt into the dirt pile. This made the dirt pile very big, as you can see here. In fact, the dirt pile began to overshadow the actual wall. I’d just created another hill a few feet from the one I dug out. Nice going, self.
Stage Fourteen: Topsoil
Erik, who is awesome, came over with topsoil to fill up part of the now-empty wall. It was wonderful to see all that nice dirt just waiting for something to be planted in it!
Stage Fifteen: Craigslist
Now, I had a problem: all that old dirt had to go. I posted a “Free Dirt” ad on Craigslist.
Lots of people came to get my dirt!
One man came over with his dog. “My dog dug up lots of holes in my rental property,” he explained, “and now I need to fill them.”
Another came over in a yellow pickup. He worked for Safeway. “There’s a big sinkhole from having a root ball removed,” he said. “Look, there are worms in this dirt! That’s a good sign!” He took two truckloads.
A lady came over with an apologetic look on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t take the whole pile.” “That’s OK,” I said, “how much do you want?” She held out a trash can.
This got rid of some of the dirt. But not very much.
Stage Sixteen: Making Dirt Usable
Kelly had the fantastic idea of mixing some of the lousy dirt with peat moss to break it up and help it hold water. That way we could get rid of more of the dirt and not have to buy more topsoil. Win/win!
The only problem is that the lousy dirt was full of dirt clods, weeds, fieldstones, and leftover rocks from the drainage and foundation gravel.
So I borrowed a sifter from my father-in-law and got to work. I sifted barrows and barrows of dirt and mixed them with fresh peat moss from the Home Depot. I don’t really know what peat moss is, but ours came from Canada and it made the dirt very soft.
Stage Seventeen: The First Seeds
Over a year after the project began, Kelly planted the very first seeds in the new bed this Sunday, and it made my heart happy. They are the first of many.
We look forward to growing lots of fruits and vegetables and flowers here, to Beatrice growing up and learning to help us plant and weed in the space, and to not mowing the hill any more. It was a lot of work, but I’m very glad I did it: it’s really kind of wonderful to come home from my desk job and work outdoors with my hands sometimes. That guy in Office Space was on to something.
Now all I need to do is clean up the dirt and debris and plant some grass.
I figure it’ll take a couple of weekends.
