Retaining Wall

I went to the lake today in order to put the rip rap at the base of the new wall, but when I got there, the neighbor was working on backfilling the wall for us.  So rather than working on the rip rap, I helped with the backfill.  You can tell just how much grass we added at the base of the stairs, this will be huge!

Retaining Wall

We finished the retaining wall and stairs this weekend!  Next weekend we plan to finish some back fill, fix the sprinklers and put down some sod.  

Concrete: 4.5 pallets (7.5 tons)
3/4" rock: 4 yards (4.5 tons)
Wall blocks: 210 (7 tons)
Stair blocks: 64 (2.5 tons)
Total: 21.5 tons!

Retaining Wall

The main retaining wall is done!  Thanks to some help from Brian, we have moved 14,000 lbs of retaining wall blocks down 21 stairs and stacked them on the beach so far.  We have also hauled 10,000 lbs of concrete and 10,000 lbs of gravel down the stairs.  

We will start the "grand staircase" next weekend.

Retaining Wall

We started stacking blocks!  The first course is complete and filled in front.  The second course is started, but I can't go much further until I get fabric and gravel to put behind the wall.  

Many of the old blocks are stacked behind the new wall as fill where we added 3 feet to the grass strip below the deck.  That way we don't have to haul them up the hill!

Retaining Wall

The staircase will now be 12 feet wide and dead-end directly into the fin fall.  The bottom step will be poured concrete but every step above that will be 16 x 6 x 12 stair blocks stacked on a bed of gravel and dry concrete mix.  This footer is up to 16" thick and sitting on clay so the water will not undermine it.

Retaining Wall

Because the neighbor and I will have different block, we decided to pour a concrete wall on the property line that will allow us each to dead-end our walls into the concrete so there is a nice separation between them.  This will also prevent failure of one wall from causing failure on the other, which is what happened this year. 

Retaining Wall

1 Pallet full of concrete later, the footer for the retaining wall is done. We will let the cure for a couple days before stripping the forms, just so we don't brake any edges while we are walking around on the beach.  Next up, we will pour the fin wall and footer for the steps.

Retaining Wall

It took a couple days, but the ground has finally been prepped for the concrete footer that we will pour under the retaining well.  Before we could get to this point, we had to dig out a stump at the far end of the beach as well as one where the stairs will go.

The section between the gangway support and the stairs has been straightened out and pushed toward the lake 3 feet to give us more grass between the deck and the retaining wall.  This has been a complaint of ours since buying the place, it is just not usable in that area.  

The staircase will be much wider.  By making it 12 feet wide, we will be able to drag the boat lift up the staircase and park it on the grass for the winter.

Retaining Wall

Over the winter, our retaining wall which holds back the lake, fell over on one end.  We have been waiting all summer for the water to go down far enough to fix it and it finally has.  We got all the blocks unstacked so we could assess the damage, and it is not good.  The blocks are decayed badly and need replaced.   

Door Casing

We have finally started working on the trim in the cabin.  We decided on a Craftsman look with 1x3 verticals and 1x4 horizontals.  The casing on the living room side of the second bedroom and bathroom doors are both done and ready for a final coat of paint.  The closet in the second bedroom has the jams as well as the casing on the inside installed and ready for a final coat of paint as well.