Young Writers Society

The stairs in focus here took longer to finish than the entire rest of the wall. Bricks had to be cut, shaved, and fitted- with the exception of two or three all of them were done by hand. By me.

This is just a bit further back. That poor tree had to endure, but it will be ok. (Yes, that IS a tree) A few days ago, we picked up a new sawblade which solved many of the problems we were having. In short, bricks are brittle, and shatter if they don't have enough to support them. We tried a lot, and spent hundreds of dollars before we picked up a new sawblade for our new saw (which we baught to replace the 30 year old saw that we broke in the process) for a total of 15 dollars. (headdesk)

This is the first part of the wall we built. The brownish stuff up top is gravel. While that stuff does go all the way down, this is just a top layer that has some water permiable fabric undernieth. After buying a total of 150 bags of gravel, having to go back and in three seperate trips, buying 150 more bags, had 12 extra. That gravel up top is the 12 extra.


Last summer we (and by we, I mean I) tore out the old retaining wall in my back yard. It was 20 years old, made of wooden rail ties, improperly founded, and therefor, rotting out.

So after tearing out 25 or so 300 pound rail ties (give or take, some of them were very small, and most of them were so rotten that only a shell was left) we dug back, to put in a proper foundation for the new wall. When we were finally done digging, it was time for me to go off to college. The project had to wait.

This summer, we bought a bunch of bricks, a bunch of gravel, some ready mix, and got to work.
First we poured some concrete, to properly give the brick something to rust on. The concrete prevents water from getting underneith the bricks, staying there, and freezing over the winter, causing the pressure to increse under the bricks and cracking them. Then we poured gravel behind the dried concrete to give the water a way out. We didn't put in a water drain because where I live doesn't have any bedrock, and water has a lot of room to go down, which means the whole foundation may or may not have been necesary, since this isn't wood and doesn't rot.

Then I started stacking bricks. In the end, we were only 11 bricks short of our goal, which is pretty accurate giving that we were making a rough estimate and it was out of more than 300.

When we got to the stairs, we had to start cutting bricks to fit, since the stacking pattern was such that no two bricks met at the same spot, and that occasionally, a brick would be stuck back into the foundation. It makes the wall stronger.

We also built the stairs, and by we I mean I, so that each step is supported by the step in front. Which is clever, but that means in order to tie the wall in you've got to plane some bricks. We tried numerous tactics, but it was still hard. And I had to cut more than a few (try 50) by hand.

The stiars have a similar foundation- concrete base, which was a weekend all its own. There is a pillar of concrete undernieth the stairs that goes down 42 inches, well below the freezing line.