The wall is done. Yep, you heard right – done.
Can’t believe it’s finished? Didn’t think this day would come? Well, yeah, we were also starting to think it would never happen, but it was definitely worth the wait!
The result is pretty amazing and so much better than anything we could have achieved ourselves.
The joints are all completely even, everything is level and we even have a proper gate post that finishes the wall off at the end.
You can still see the old concrete gate post on the left side of the driveway that Jan still has to remove and we also need to find a terracotta pier cap to finish the top of the new post, but that will probably involve a lot of hours traveling from reclamation yard to reclamation yard and a lot of luck to get one to match the one that would have been there originally.
Having a wall again really takes some getting used to. Our garden has been such a complete mess/building site/danger zone for such a long time now, that you almost get used to falling or breaking an ankle when walking over to the bins.
Thanks to some of the cleanest builders ever, we’ve now gone from this
To this
We’re really glad that we decided to take up a strip of the asphalt before the wall was built. It’ll definitely make removing the rest of it at a lot easier and reduce the change of us damaging our new wall.
Looking at the wall from the inside of our garden, you can see that the bottom three rows are made out of a slightly different brick. This is the way it was before (and would have traditionally been made, too.)
Although the bricks are different, we think it actually adds to the character of the wall. But do the bricks look familiar? Okay, so maybe not to you, but they are the bricks that came from the wall that we removed between our kitchen and dining room.
Even before starting work on our rebuilding our garden wall, we knew we wouldn’t have enough bricks to finish the job, so using the bricks that we’re left over from knocking down our interior wall made perfect sense.
With autumn now well on its way, it’s great to have a wall that we know isn’t going to collapse at the first sign of a bit of frost. I’m pretty sure that if we’d waited another winter there wouldn’t have been many bricks left to save.
Cleaning around 800 bricks for hours on end has got to be one of the most boring but best money saving jobs we’ve done in the house so far. Whist I hated every minute of it, taking down the wall and cleaning the bricks ourselves saved us about £600 (which has gone towards another project that’s just been completed! I sooo can’t wait to share!)
Now that the wall is finished, we can’t help noticing all of the other projects that still need to be completed.
But to start with, we now need to find a new garden gate. We’ve been looking at both wooden gates and wrought iron ones. It’s really difficult to decide… what would you choose? Do you have any projects you’re trying to get finished before winter kicks in? Have you ever done any horrible building related jobs to save money?
You can catch up on our other wall related posts here:
Part 1 – Another Brick In The Wall
Congratulations – what a difference! He did such a good job, I’m sure if feels great to know you did so much hard drudge work and he made it all look so beautiful.
The only down side is that having something fixed does make you look at everything else with an even more critical eye, but everything in time.
Cheers
Thanks Kerrie! We’re really happy with the result, too. You’re right about the downside though. Fingers crossed we’ll manage to get a few other outdoor things finished this year!
Cx
The wall looks amazing! I love both wood and iron gates, so I can’t really say… Just no plastic one, of course, but I don’t think that ever crossed your mind.
Thanks Magali! We’re still undecided on the gate situation. You’re right – I’d never even thought about plastic ones, having said that, the price will probably influence our decision, too.
Cx
For the missing terracotta post cap: I’m sure theres a local ceramic artist who could recreate one. It might not be the least expensive route, but probably wouldn’t be too pricey, and could save you a lot of time.
That’s a great idea! Thanks Lindsay! We’ll definitely have a look into that possibility – the more options we have the better!
Cx
Just a gorgeous wall!
Kudos to you and your mason.
Thanks Mary, I’ll pass on your compliment!
Cx
This looks so nice and tidy. I bet you and your neighbors are pumped. -Caitlin
All of our neighbours have commented on house good the wall looks – I’m pretty sure there as relieved as us that it’s finally up again! The skip was removed about 10 minutes ago and for the first time in months it’s actually starting to look more like a garden again. Now all we need is a gate…
Cx
Fantastic wall! It’s good to pick your battles, isn’t it? Great use of the interior wall brick. Congrats!
Thanks Stacey! Our builder was the one who suggested using the interior bricks which ended up saving us quite a bit of cash! Such a great idea (and builder)!
Cx