Retaining Wall Replacement: Part II

 8:00PM

 We came home from dinner to find a second excavator and...

...rock deliveries numbers 3 and 4 of 4 in our driveway.

 

7:30AM

 

 The crew today is only about half the size of yesterday's, but they are still planning to finish the second half of the wall today.

 

The final positioning of most of the rocks is done by hand. The excavator is too strong make the final adjustments.

More pictures and videos to follow in Part III.

Retaining Wall Replacement: Part I

7:00AM

The tools of the trade...

 ....shovels, level, and mallets,...

 

  ...chisels and hammers,...

 ... your excavator,...

 ... and your dog named Luna.

 The retaining wall removal and preparation for the new wall began immediately.

 

 The back side of the retaining wall fell over in one piece, with not much effort.

 That pile represents about 10 minutes of work and that's only because they had to wait for a nest of angry bees to move along.

8:00AM

Rock delivery number 1 of 4

 The rock for our retaining wall is no ordinary rock. It is coming from Manhattan, specifically from the Second Avenue Subway line, which is currently under construction.

 

The other challenge was trying to find the pipe and distribution box for the septic. As it turns out, our 30 year old map was wrong, but they did find it after a lot of digging.

 

 

 11:45AM

Rock delivery number 2 of 4

 

Delivery number two had a small complication when the truck got pinned between the tree and the rocks that it just dumped. The exacavator had come to the rescue.

1:00PM

 

One more video to give you an idea of the pace of the work. Each rock has to be put in place, so it seems like a very slow process, until you realize how far they made it in one day. Check out those pictures in Part II.

Retaining Wall Before

 Just to give you an idea of what we were working with originally. We hadn't experienced a collapse yet, but we also did not want to wait until we were at that point.

 

 

Revealing the View

Before

After

There is a void now in the hill. That is our back yard where the trees were topped.

 After day one. They were cut short because of pouring rain.

Completed

 Due to the proximity of property lines, they were only able to cut a window looking West. At least now we can see the sunset in the winter and the summer now.

 Fully opened looking slightly SW.

 The large and small windows.

East Bedroom

 The last pictures with the rug and built-in bed still installed. Andrew is trying to figure out how to get the bed out. There were lag bolts, nails, and screws holding it in and together. Eventually the reciprocating saw got involved.

 The rug is gone! I think I removed about 1,000 staples that were holding the pad down. The blisters on my hands were worth it though!

The plastic barrier did not last long. Once we turned the box fan on there was quit a draft and it pulled it down. I think the rest of the house still remained mostly dust-free.

 It's hard to find good help these days.

All of the stains and paint came out easily this time. The bare wood looks great and is ready for polyurethane.

The floor is done! We just have a few more finish touches to do. The baseboard molding is in the bedroom now, and we have cut all of the pieces for the hallway, but we are waiting to paint before we install those.