Category: Grounds (Page 3 of 7)

Courtesy of Jo……

Yes, I did say the weather was good on this day. By mid afternoon, the sun had come out. I even took my hat and coat off and got a sun tan!

Me and Gordon trying to work out the best way of placing the toppings. They aren’t all the same shape, so some of them have to be chocked at the back to make the tops level (hence the yellow spirit level and the bit of string).

The boss. Under a blanket. Zep has selected these stones personally and they are now under guard. Soon long as he doesn’t fall asleep!

We have made the best of the good weather over the Easter Bank holiday and have been finishing off (or attempting to) the walls in the sunken garden.

We now have the large topping stones on the upper wall.  This is a two man job as many of the stones are too heavy to be lifted by one person.  Many thanks to Gordon for his help in getting this is place.  And no flatten fingers or toes in the process!

We are going to use reclaimed flagstones to pave this area, but this is going to have to wait for a little while.  We looked at new Ashlar flags (they would look too new) and Indian sandstone (really, what in Yorkshire!), but we are going to hang on until we have the money to put down reclaimed local stone.  At £50-60 a square meter it isn’t cheap and with around 100sqm in the sunken garden, it all adds up.

And while we are on the subject of money, we decide to invest in our own cement mixer.  We bought a second hand one on eBay for £150.  If we sell it in 4-6 months time for £100, it will have cost us £50.  In contrast to the £40/week it would have cost to hire.  It was a bit of a no-brainer.

We now have the topping stones on the upper wall in the sunken garden. The smaller ones are just about manageable by one person, the larger ones require two to lift. The end stone is a monster and two of us struggled, but we got there in the end.

The upper wall complete with toppings. These topping stones are 30cms high x 20cms wide x 40cms deep. There are cut from old stones in one of the local quarries. Many of them are old steps, window heads or door cills.

You can see the topping stones on the upper wall in the background, we are still working on the remaining walls. Hopefully, these will be finished in the next couple of days.

We still need to get the end wall up to the same level before we can put the topping stones on. We decided to invest in a second-hand cement mixer.

The weather was ok today with no rain, so we spent the whole day on the wall in the courtyard garden.  We have now got the end wall above the level of the blockwork for the reatining wall.  The wall will need to come up a little further, but it will do for now.  We are now starting to work on the wall that will adjoin the timber steps that lead to the upper terrace.

We spent most of the day today building the wall in the courtyard. We are making the most of the fine weather, after all, it isn’t going to be last much longer. We are now about to turn the corner where the timber steps will be built.

The end wall is now up to the same level (and in some place, above) the retaining blockwork. We have used 3 one tonne bags of 3.5 inch stones and one bag of “jumpers” (the bigger 6 inch stones).

We are sorting out the reclaimed stone as we build the wall. The stones are sorted into groups according to their height. All of these stones are 8cms high.

I have been busy on other things this week and not had a lot of time to work on the wall in the courtyard. However, I did get a couple of hours on it today, in between showers. Unfortunately, I have had to cover today’s work with hessian to prevent rain running down the front of the stones and washing the cement out.

Today’s work is covered in hessian to protect it from the rain. With the weather, we only got a couple of hours to work on it today.

When I looked at the photographs of yesterday’s work on the reclaimed stone wall, I realised that it wasn’t great – the courses were just to muddled up. 

There was no alternative other than to take it apart and redo it.  The sand and cement that I used to backbed the stones was still soft, so it didn’t take long to take it apart – just a quick tap with a hammer does the trick.  If I hadn’t rebuilt it, it would have bugged me for years.  It seemed a worthwhile investment of an hour or so to rebuilt that part.

The reason for the poorly built wall? A sprained ankle.  I fell over the previous evening coming out of the pub (not because of too much beer, but a pothole in the road – honest!) and sprained my ankle.  The next day I was hobbling around.  This meant that I didn’t stand back and look at the wall frequently enough while I was building it.  I only looked at it at the end of the day and probably only looked at it properly until I photographed it.  Then it was too late.

Looking at today’s photos, I am much happy.  It looks much better – not perfect, but better.

All in all, three days work – including an hour or so to redo half a dozen courses that I wasn’t happy with.

Well, I looked at the photographs from yesterday and I really didn’t like the part of the wall to camera right. There was no alternative but to take it down and redo it. It took an hour to take it down and rebuild it.

I have spent the last couple of days building a reclaimed stone wall in front of the retaining wall in the garden.  This is the first set of stone that we have imported to the site.  Much of the existing stone on site is poor and unfortunately the quality of a wall depends on the quality of the stone used to build it.

The stones are “back bedded” meaning that a small amount of sand and cement is used at the back of the stones to hold them in place.  It also is required to attach the front wall to the retaining wall using the stainless steel ties. 

It has taken a couple of days to complete this part of the wall.  The stones come in large bags and need to be “coursed out” – sorted into groups depending on their height.  The stones are sorted into groups of 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9cms.  The larger stones are almost all 15 or 16cms high.  While it takes time to course the stones, it does make building the wall that much quicker – as soon as you know you have enough of one course, you can get on and cement the stones in place.

This is the reclaimed stone wall that has been built in front of the retaining wall in the courtyard garden.

The wall is made of reclaimed stone. We are using two sizes of stones 3 – 3.5 and 6 – 6.5. The larger stones are used as “jumpers” to break up the courses and make it less uniform.

This shows how the reclaimed stone wall has been tied into the retaining block wall. The ties are made of stainless steel.

If it rains over night, the rain may wash some of the cement down the front of the stones. This would cause marks and can be avoided by covering the newly built wall with a large piece of hessian.