Recent Progress Photos

I promised some photos of the recent work in my last post.  Here's a view of the end of the finished wall, showing the problematic steps and the patio:

The rest of the dry limestone wall is to the left of the steps and goes along the side of the house - it's about 12 metres long.  Note on the right the small brick wall which retains some earth to protect the footing of the high rear wall; the small wall has the remnants of the paving as coping - and a spare seat!

Here's the view along the side of the house, towards the steps and patio.

Top Tip 1: when doing stone walling, avoid curves and corners - I made life very difficult for myself with my design.

(Left) A close up of the steps, showing the alternative lining for them - when I decided that mortared limestone would take up too much of the width of the steps, I used off-cuts of limestone flooring from the church work last year, cut into one inch strips and held together with NHL 3.5

On a sudden whim, on Tuesday I decided that the weather was cool enough to allow me to do lime work outside, so I decided to finish off the wall end to one side of the front gateway; I did the other side properly two years ago and this side has been dry assembled since 2011 - but was now spreading a bit.  This is the halfway stage when I had done the two levels of stone:

Here's the finished article with the corner coping stone attached on Wednesday.  As you might imagine, I had some difficulty doing this wall with the four year old hornbeam hedge in such close proximity!

Top Tip 2: Always finish a wall BEFORE planting a hedge beside it!!