These photos date way back to March. I had no idea that I hadn't shared them until recently. Oops! I guess they got overlooked. This was around the same time Matt built the wishing well. It was kinda a rocky month (haha get it? rocky?)
We have a two car garage which is not used for cars. But we do need to park two cars in front of the garage door. Back when the house was under construction, we poured gravel just where we HAD to have it. See below how it really only fits one car parked in the center of it. The rocks taper to the sides and you can see the cender-block foundation. The sole purpose was to allow trucks to back up to the garage to unload stuff, not to look pretty.
For three months we parked our cars side-by-side on the mound of gravel causing the cars to lean away from each other. Matt finally got more gravel. I believe we got it all from the rock quarry and hauled it ourselves in Matt's dad's dump truck.
Matt dumped then spread out the gravel with the skid steer (aka bob cat). Since the right side of the garage is on the corner, pushing the gravel over there would have caused it just to spill around the corner. We needed a retaining wall of some sort to hold the gravel in place and stay in front of the house.
Having just gathered rocks for the well house, Matt was in rock gathering mode and disappeared back into the woods with the skid steer. It didn't take him long to emerge with a bucket full of rocks. And by rocks, I mean boulders. These suckers were big. I didn't know how he got them into the skid steer bucket.
Well, it turns out it was shear man-power. Some of these rocks easily weigh 600+ lbs. Matt muscled them into place, starting with the biggest ones. As it was coming together, we realized these rocks had nice flat sides and would make great steps!
He laid the big rocks down and filled in with smaller ones on the sides. They don't even wobble at all!
I absolutely LOVE them! They are one of my favorite projects we've done. It only took about 2 hours and cost NO money. I think they really add to the "hardscape" of our yard and are completely functional (actually dual-purpose: wall/steps). Too bad we always have a vehicle parked there, so most people who visit don't even notice them.
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ReplyDeleteUnless the wall is designed to retain water, It is important to have proper drainage behind the wall in order to limit the pressure to the wall's design value. Drainage materials will reduce or eliminate the hydrostatic pressure and improve the stability of the material behind the wall. Drystone retaining walls are normally self-draining.
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Retaining Walls Plymouth