Hello everyone! I hope you’re all having a good week. Charlottesville weather has been so absurd lately… the weather forecast changes minute by minute on sunshine/ thunderstorms/ sprinkles. We’re getting a LOT of thunderstorms in our neck of the woods and it’s been far from fun, but I know we had a dry winter and spring so I’m sure it’s needed somewhere (just not at our house, that’s for sure). Despite the rain I have a lot of progress to share with you on the retaining wall!
Apparently when building a rock wall, the most important anchor is the edge, so that’s where our masons spent the most time. It was fascinating watching them do this– they must have spent hours finding the best rocks to use and line up perfectly. And wow did it work well!
They used concrete to back the wall up from behind and then packed it with good ol Virginia clay. It looks JUST the way I was hoping it would… light on the mortar, heavy on accentuating the beauty of the natural rocks. It also slightly leans into the hill, which seems like an important part of the equation from the research I’d done online.
Here’s a picture I snapped of David and Evie when we watching the whole process: 
I included this picture for scale– you can see it’s a short wall although it seems to have a big presence!
The good news, and bad news, is that we’re going to have TONS of rocks left over. The masons working on it said they won’t even touch half of our rock pile. That’s good because they can pick and choose exactly which rocks they want for this wall… but that’s bad because we’ll still have heaps of rocks in the yard and no plan for them! (I’m petrified of snakes residing in/ under rocks ever since I pulled a big rock out of our old driveway and a baby copperhead was curled up underneath.)
In my next blog post I will share the finished product! [Cue squealing!] Can’t wait!
Wishing everyone a week full of hope and happiness,
love the wall and love even more that all of the rocks used were dug up on your property. Very special.l.. and a labor of love on David’s part. 🙂
The wall is going to look SO NICE!
High-fives and kudos to Sade for unearthing all those rocks — that’s hard work!!
And don’t worry about the leftover ones. You’ll find uses for them — and if not, we can always use some at our place!
Thank you so much, we love how it turned out!