The Great Wall

The day we bought our home Hubs and I have been pondering great things for the backyard.  We are total backyard people .. love the outdoors and hanging outside.  The previous owner did a lot, a whole lot of flowers and flowering shrubs, edging, and trees.  What our yard lacks first and foremost is grass and a place to sit.  Unfortunately, we can't tackle our mud hole of moss until the last freeze, but what we can totally work on is a nice patio area. 

Hubs and I talked about a patio versus a deck since day one.  We settled on a patio so that our yard stays open and wide.  Over the past couple of weekends we have visited places to price pavers and have played with the design using Google Sketchup.  Just lask weekend, we settled on our design and purchased our first bit of pavers.. for the retaining wall.  We have this awkward slope on the one side of the house which also happens to be the best place for the patio.  We figured we needed to build a 1.5 to 2 foot high wall on the one side of the patio, wrap around our current planting bed, then swerve back to the porch door.  Yes, I know, it is hard to imagine.  I will upload our sketch-up design soon.

Anyways, with a pallet of Pavestone pavers back at the house, Hubs and I tackled the excavation, footer setting bed, and stacking pavers for the wall.

Excavating the Trench for our Retaining Wall

Adding a Pavestone Setting Bed for the First Row of Pavers

Building 'The Wall'



 Now, we should have finished backfilling our wall Sunday, which is made up of one part gravel and one part soil, especially since there was rain in the forecast for Tuesday.  But, we didn't have any gravel nor the time so decided to cover the retaining wall on Monday night for the rain on Tuesday. 

I must admit, although it make me cringe, our wall FELL over Wednesday due to water in the footers and probably the weight of the water in the poly cover.  BOO.  So this weekend we will hopefully be able to tilt the wall back up with little re-work.