Blog du Wren

Weekend Wall Building

At one point in my life, I was a stone mason's assistant/landscaper guy*. The job mainly entailed carrying heavy rocks and shoveling gravel. As I worked my way up the not-at-all-corporate ladder, however, I got to get in on the actual building part. And while I never did a wall all by myself, I was involved in all the different parts of wall building, at least enough to get the general idea of things.

Fast forward 5 years. I got a chance to put those skills to use. My brother is now a homeowner, and as such, he is on a home improvement kick, as with most new homeowners. A layer of paint here, a new floor there, new gardens here, there, and everywhere. When he started talking about putting in a rock retaining wall/terrace, I couldn't help but give my two cents. To make a long story short, 2 cents became 2 tons over 2 days. This weekend, I went down and acted as director for the wall you see before you. Jule and Katy did the majority of the actual building (as my wrist has recently put in for its 2 weeks vacation for the year and refused to work). I stood by and imparted sage wisdom.

The results, IMHO, are spectacular. With the materials we had in the time we had, we created something pretty freaking nice. It felt good to be back out working with the rawest* of building materials, creating from . And with the way the wall turned out, I now have an even greater appreciation for those skills that I learned so many years ago, with a yoke on my shoulders, an ache in my back, but almost always a smile on my face.

Monday November 24 2008

File under: work, misc

Toggle Comments (6)

comment?

on Mon 24th Nov, 2008 02:01 pm PST Joe said:
nice job wren it looks good. i'm sure it felt good to get back to your computer after all that tho. ;-) don't lie!
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on Mon 24th Nov, 2008 04:02 pm PST dave said:
wren, that wall is awesome! nice work. it's so cool to have useful, shareable skills.
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on Mon 24th Nov, 2008 05:35 pm PST jule said:
make that 8 1/2 tons. Thanks wren! That is a great wall
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on Mon 24th Nov, 2008 09:36 pm PST Wren said:
I meant only that I probably moved 2 tons. Jule and Katy each moved a fair piece more than that. I didn't mean to diminish nothing.
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on Tue 25th Nov, 2008 07:10 pm PST Nesbitt said:
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," but I don't know what, walls rock.
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on Tue 25th Nov, 2008 07:49 pm PST Wren said:
I didn't get it either. Now I do. (Oh, those academic types...)
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