Retaining Wall Make Over

A short trip to the hardware store last weekend resulted in a busy afternoon and another job ticked off "The List".

We were checking out the varieties of blocks available to rebuild the low retaining wall around our fire pit.. The idea was just to get some ideas but we ended up finding one that we liked so we brought enough to do the job and headed home.
I thought that once we got home I would go back to my plans for a relaxing Sunday and we would tackle the actual rebuild another day.
I was wrong.
While I was putting some shopping away Hubby had headed out the back and was dismantling the existing retaining wall.

The wall was made out of some very old, very ugly H blocks and the wall had never looked nice since we brought the place.  It was just a weed patch that was hard to maintain and looked ugly.
Quite a few of the blocks had broken or been chipped but we kept the good ones and will try and find a new life for them somewhere on the farm.

The dirt in the blocks was almost pure worm castings and would have been lovely to add to the garden but it was also full of biting green ants so it stayed where it was.

We knocked a stake into the ground and measured a circle from that point with a string line.  I tied a loop in the string so that it didn't move and we were able to create a semicircle with out new blocks.

Once we had it marked out Hubby mixed up some concrete and we got busy laying out the blocks.

I am a bit of a stickler for doing things properly, it is something I grew up hearing from my dad.  "Do it once and do it properly", the complete opposite to how previous owners have done things at our place.  

So as much as Hubby would have liked to have just slapped those blocks down I made him concrete, measure and level.  He moans a bit at the time but afterwards he always comments that he is glad we didn't cut corners.

It only took us a few hours working together to get it done and we are really happy with the result.  We really love our little fire pit area and have given it a christening with friends over the weekend to celebrate Hubby's birthday.  I am sure it will get plenty of use in the future too.