I am getting further and further behind on post to the web site, and the next few weeks are likely to increase the backlog rather than decrease it. This past weekend, Justine and I were able to complete one major project on Galiano that we had been working on for quite some time.

While we typically have a ton of projects on the go, most of them are quite dull – try and keep ahead of the broom; dig thistles and nettles out of the lawn; weed the garden; clean the gutters – not stuff that really makes any sense on the blog. Our latest project is mor interesting and comes with photos to illustrate.

Earlier this year, we started to build a fire pit in front of the cottage. We dug down a level area that had a decent view of Mount Baker (when you can see it), leveled it out as it’s on quite a slope, and put down a load of gravel to make a nice safe area to have fires. We can’t use it in the summer, so we had maybe one or two fires in the late spring.

Because of the amount that we had to dig down to create a level area, we ended up with a “wall” of dirt, maybe 18” high along the one side. To avoid it collapsing over time, and to create a nice visual element around the fire pit, I decided that we should build a small rock retaining wall. There were lots of rocks around the property, and we thought it would also eventually provide a nice area for another garden.

Over the past few trips, we collected a lot of rocks – from around the property, from some neighbors and even from along side of the road as we noticed them. When we thought we had enough we bough some bags of mortar and decided to try our hands at stone masonry (or a poor approximation anyway).

We collected a lot of rocks and spent quite a bit of time roughing out the position of the wall.

The first thing we did was try and build out the wall using the rocks on hand. Not perfectly, but enough to make sure we had enough rocks and that we knew roughly how we wanted to position them to give us something that looked visually appealing. That took a lot longer than I had originally expected. There was a lot of pulling down sections and rebuilding them as we worked along the side of the direct wall. But eventually we got there.

Starting to use mortar to put it all together.

Then we had to pull it all down and start over with mortar. Again, this was much harder than it seemed like it should have been. We had all the rocks and knew where they should go, but as we pulled things apart, we had to subtly rework it. That and we needed a lot more rocks to fill in spaces between and behind the wall to give it enough structure and stability.

The wall in it’s mostly completed state.

The process worked pretty well, but we quickly realized we did not have nearly enough mortar. Luckily it was a Saturday, and the hardware store was open and had the mortar we needed, so after getting though about half the project, we were able to stop for lunch, take a break and a drive down to get the remaining supplies that we needed.

Eventually we finished up the wall! Overall, we are pretty happy with it, and I think it does what we hoped it would do. It looks nice, and hopefully will prevent the hill from collapsing on our firepit. Now we just need some rain, so we can sit out and enjoy a fire or too before it gets too cold.

Almost done - the extra rocks cleaned up and lights back in place.

The finished product. Not bad for a couple of armatures!

We had some beautiful days on this trip. The sunrises were particularly nice.

With days shortening, the sunrises happen after I get up.