Let the (re)building commence!

image from Magnific.com

Before I continue with the saga of the garden wall I thought I'd let you know that despite the weather warming up, the smell of decomposing rat seems to have dissipated 👏 We did have a brief episode of flies suddenly appearing in the dining room, which were coming up through cracks in the floorboards of the cupboard under the stairs.  Thankfully there wasn't a huge number of the blighters and that, too, seems be over.  I admit that I am still a wee bit paranoid about every little creak but hopefully things have calmed down now 🤞 

Anyhoo, back to the wall!  George had got this far before we went south.  I mentioned yesterday that there was slightly more of an issue with the rest of the wall than had at first been apparent.  It seems that when this section had been rebuilt back in the mists of time it had been lined up with the rest of the wall, which must have been bowing out to some degree even then.

Of course, George was rebuilding in a nice, straight, line which meant that there was going to be a discrepancy between the two sections of wall 😏

The solution he came up with was to incorporate a pillar between the two sections.

This actually helped in a couple of ways...

  ...it added some support to the section that wasn't being rebuilt, as well as giving both sections a point where they could be "tied in".

It also helped to disguise the fact that one section is properly in line whereas the other definitely isn't 😳

It's a double-sided wall, with the void between the two sections filled with concrete and some of the more "rubbly" pieces of the old stone.  I was a very happy bunny when George sent me a photo update whilst we were away, showing that the garden was now contained by the wall once again! 

Obviously George didn't end up with the same amount of stone available to use as the original builders had started off with.  As I've mentioned previously some of the old stone had decayed too much to be reused, and of course some had to be incorporated into the new pillar. 

Consequently the rebuild is lower than the old wall was.  You can see in the photo above how the garden wall was built into the wall running across the garden, which itself was built into the side of the house.

You may not recall but our greenhouse was built on the other side of that wall.  Like the garden border wall, this was also not in good condition.  The greenhouse was built with concrete blocks, the full-height back wall of which was "tied" to this old wall to stabilise it.

Looking good from both sides 😊

The photo above shows more clearly how much out of line the old section of wall actually is.  Had we had more funds available we may well have had the whole length of the wall rebuilt.  Unfortunately we just didn't feel that we could afford to spend that amount of money on what would in effect be aesthetics as opposed to a genuine need for rebuilding the whole wall.  It is what it is ~ after all, you do have to cut your coat according to your cloth 😉