A Bit of History
Laura initiated this three-ish year project to improve the approach to the house’s front door. I too thought it could be improved and we therefore took it on without completely nailing down what we wanted. Nonetheless, we knew enough to get started, whittling away at it in phases. While we didn’t think it would take as long as it did (it’s still not 100% done), life happened and it became clear it’d need time. Here’s the full story.
About a year after we moved in, we hired a landscape architect to draft plans for the entire property. His plans (above) suggested a new retaining wall built of timbers with a wood veneer and metal cap. Lights along the wall would add visibility and a bit of drama. The wall would be pushed back to widen the path between the garage (the dark outlined rectangular shape in the image) and the house (the area marked Rivera residence). The path itself was slated to be tiled in porcelain including the steps to the front door which would have an expanded landing. It was all good and fine aside from the cost. In an effort to defray costs, I decided to do much of the work myself.
The existing area had a retaining wall that was failing in places due to rotted posts. We also disliked how narrow the walkway was as well as the color of the wall (in fact, we didn’t like any of the house colors).
Before we get much further, let me describe the approach to the front door since it’s not typical. Our house is a classic tri-level, but rather than the three floors facing the street, our house is turned 90 degrees with the middle floor facing the street and the up and downstairs pointing toward the back of the lot (apologies if you have trouble visualizing this—it’s a little hard to explain). Additionally, the house sits on a slope losing elevation going north to south (the landscape drawing above shows north toward the top). The garage sits south of the house but isn’t connected. All of these facts combine to create an interesting, albeit unusual approach. You need to walk up the driveway then through the covered path between house and garage to arrive at the front door which is a few steps up. The path is essentially a tunnel with four skylights allowing the sun to seep through. It’s not your typical suburban home which we love but does pose conundrums, some of which were to be addressed with the project—widening the path, replacing the rotting wall, and addressing the color.
Work Begins
The first to do in DIY projects is often demolition and that was the case on this project. I took out the wood wall and rotted posts to expose the retained dirt. I planned to widen the path about 18 inches. Why? Nobody knows. I made it up. It seemed like enough room to feel less cramped yet not so wide that the remaining retained area didn’t feel out of proportion. Of course, this meant I had to excavate 90-ish cubic feet of dirt which I did before tearing down the wall. Now, for those who do any yard work, you know it effectively comes down to moving materials from here to there. In this case, given that the dirt had been infested with bindweed (argh!), I didn’t want to introduce it elsewhere in the yard so I threw it away along with our weekly household trash—1/3 of a city issued trash container at a time. I came to learn through trial and error that the trash truck can’t pick up the weight of our trash bin if it’s much more full beyond 1/3 (not to mention my own difficulty maneuvering that much weight). AI tells me 90 cu. ft. of dirt weighs north of 3 tons so you can imagine how long it took to be hauled away. Herein lies a major reason why the project took so long to complete. And yes, I could have gotten a haul away trash container and eliminated months of wait time, but I’m too cheap and there were plenty of other projects to do (see my other posts on home improvements).
Ok, let’s fast forward many months. The dirt is gone as is the old wall. (Side note: apologies to all visitors who had to walk through this murder scene to reach the front door.) At this point, there’s still a lot of debris to throw away (the rotted posts, concrete bases, the wall itself, and random crap you find buried like pots, toys, wrappers, etc.), but we also have room to begin the new wall, starting with the posts.
The new wall, anchored by stainless steel post will ideally succumb to rot and entropy less quickly than the old wood anchored wall, so that’s what I went with. Stainless steel isn’t cheap, but they trade cost for longevity plus build time—no need to dig holes for concrete anchored wood posts. I ran string to keep the posts in line and then pounded the shit out of the posts to set them. These posts are originally meant for fences so they’re 8 or 9 feet tall—way more than needed for the height of the wall, but also not tall enough to make two posts out of one (our wall is 2 1/2-3 feet tall depending on the slope of the surrounding land). I pounded them 3 feet into the ground and ended up cutting off the tops at a later date (the smashed tops would obviously need to go anyway). If you’re the sort of person with anger issues, I recommend pounding steel posts.
The Actual Wall
Once the posts were in (I built the long run before the shorter perpendicular one—more on that later), it was time for wood. I bought lumber from Sterling Lumber in Boulder (free delivery!). I bought treated 12’x20’ planks plus a few shorter ones to cover the length of the main run. I made the rookie mistake of waiting too long to install them. They laid in the garage a week or two. Enough time that the boards began to dry unevenly resulting in some twisting and warping. No longer nice and square, I had my old, trustworthy friend Brant help me put the first board up by pulling and pushing the board into as straight a position as possible while I placed the hardware securing it into place. Thanks Brant!
Speaking of hardware, another rookie mistake was not lining up the hardware to be perfectly straight vertically and horizontally. It’s not noticeable by casual visitors, but as the builder, I can’t not see it, you know what I mean? I’ve learned to live with it, but it’s the small craft details in a multi-year project that lingers in my mind.
Completing the Wall
Slowly and methodically, the wall came together and the neighbors sighed relief that they didn’t live next door to a permanent construction zone (though there was still mounds of exposed dirt and other crap all around, but more on that in another post). The slow progress was partly caused by the wall’s tiered nature. Each row pops out about a half inch from the row above it. To accomplish this, I placed a spacer board at each post to push each row out. By the third row, this meant screwing bolts through 1 1/2” of a spacer board, 2 1/2” of the wall board, the steel post, and then enough extra length to accommodate washers and nuts (in other words, long screws—the ones you see in hardware stores and wonder “who needs those?” I do.).
As might be expected, there were problems. I planned to build the wall two 12” boards high plus the top railing. But as the wall came together, it felt too short. Adding an additional 6” row made the wall feel properly proportioned. However, since the rows were staggered from one another, I had a dilemma. How would I indent this new top row to achieve the same staggered effect as the others? Installing a skinnier board seem like the easy answer, yet it came with a trade off. Since the top railing would be a 2×4 laid flat over the wall, it would end up secured to a top row made from a mere 1” thick plank of lumber. That struck me like a recipe for a wobbly, insecure shit show. I decided a better option was to use 2×6 lumber with notches cut into them that the steel posts could slide into creating the staggered effect. True, their strength would suffer a bit, but the rest of the board would still be beefy enough to hold the top rail firmly. And since the top rail would cover the post and the notched board, I figured it’d all tie into itself well enough to hold over the years. We’ll see.
Once the wall was finished (including turning the corner and continuing it at a perpendicular angle), I felt good. The wall was pretty damn straight, level, and looked great. My only grievances were the misaligned hrdware and the corner not quite coming together as well as I hoped. I did feel great that the corner came out at all what with the calculations and deliberations around the staggers, spacer boards, length of overhang, and angle cuts.
Wait, There’s More
Notice in the photos above that the rain chain coming down from the gutter used to end inside the retaining wall. Today, with the wall pushed back, it falls outside. That’s not a problem in and of itself. But when it rains, water comes down the chain and splashes onto the ground splashing dirt and anything else on the ground onto the wall. Since we have plans to tile the entryway (a future project), splashing won’t be such a big issue, but we’re not there yet and, besides, we’re talking about outside. There’s always some dirt and crap on the ground. So, what to do? We’ll…
The Dry Well
We needed a way to evacuate the water coming down the rain chain. What better than a dry well? Dig a receiving area under the chain, capture the water in it, then direct it through a buried pipe to another area of the yard where it can disperse into the ground away from the house. Simple.
Digging is theoretically simple. In practice, it’s a back breaking, Soviet era gulag, under appreciated, pain in the ass (a good workout though). I dug a dry well and trench (which included tunneling under the boulders in the photo). PVC pipes moved water from the catch basin at the rain chain, under the boulders, and into a 50 gallon well. I spent too long thinking about where the well should go (I overanalyze—sue me). I decided it should sit between the sewer line and the driveway rather than crossing the sewer line or changing the design altogether by making a French drain (in that case, I surmised that water could bubble onto the driveway and sidewalk, potentially freezing during colder months and creating a hazard). So far, this tiny engineering feat has worked well (see what I did there?).
Do I need to mention that the top rail went on without much issue and the whole thing was stained to give it a deeper color? If so, there you go. And with that, the story comes to a close. We still have to solve for the slope where the wall turns 90 degrees and heads into the hill, tile the walkway, and redo the stairs and landing, but that’ll be another post you can look forward to. Until then, I’ve got other yard work to do. Bye.
