Wall-Ease

Okay, so the wall is done. It ain't pretty, but it's done.

When last we left our intrepid stonemason, he'd poured concrete up to halfway, then filled in some of the rest with concrete paving stones. That still left an ugly and hard-to-fill gap at the top. How to finish the job?

Taking the advice of everyone but myself, I finally finished it off by tediously cutting and fitting small bits of pavers to fill the remaining gaps. First I'd cut the existing concrete to make the edge more or less straight, then I'd cut a paver to fit. Move over 8 inches, lather, rinse, repeat.

Cutting concrete is remarkably dirty work. The dust it creates is really fine, and gets into everything. It's also abrasive and hard to sweep away, and if you get it wet it just sticks, like, well, concrete. So you have a dusty, gritty mess that doesn't want to go away. Now imagine getting it in your eyes and up your nose. For two days.

It also burned out my angle grinder. I guess the stress of cutting so much concrete and stone finally got to it. Either that, or the gritty dust got into one of the bearings and burned it out. I got to buy myself a new angle grinder. So there's that bright spot.

Here you can see the finished wall, with two coats of white paint. Before you malign my masonry skills, I should say that the blocks are supposed to be crooked and uneven, because the original wall itself is crooked and uneven. The top isn't flat, the edges aren't straight, and the sides aren't plumb. Whoever poured this wall originally wasn't getting graded for style points. Back when it was half-buried beneath our dirt steps, nobody noticed. But now that it's exposed, you can see how quick-and-dirty it was.

I had to somehow match that wavy, uneven wall using flat paving stones. So no, they're not perfectly aligned with neat symmetrical mortar joints. They're just as uneven as the wall they're repairing. It doesn't look too bad, does it?