WIP - Garden demolition time!

[morfa]

I figure some folk on here will be interested in a few shots of me destroying my garden and rebuilding it. So here's a thread and a rough 'what I'm doing'. My garden is a bit higher than my house. Not much, a tidge under 3ft. About 80cms max. So there's a retaining wall to hold it all back. There's also a outside loo and a coalshed which are part of the retaining wall. They're about the same age as the house, 100 years. About 30 years ago the neighbours decided to knock their coalshed and loo down, which meant ours got knocked in half (they were are shared building). So the roof is in a poor state and the building as a whole is going to have to go eventually.

So I figured that removing the coal shed, loo and retaining wall to create a stepped garden made out of raised beds would be a nice thing to do. The wife likes gardening so giving her a load of extra planting area wasn't much of a hard sell. I've removed the old shed that was there already and I'm taking next week off work to do all the work.

The raised beds will be made from railway sleepers. So there's some woodworking involved.

 

[beech1948]

morfa,

I'm 66 and not as strong as when I was 30 but I had to move 12 railway sleepers last week on my own. They were pineapple heavy and a real struggle against the dead weight. Some of them must have been over 250kg due to being a bit waterlogged. I would suggest getting an extra pair of hands to help with initial move and placing. Watch your back and lift carefully.

Al

 

[morfa]

Thankfully I'm pretty strong and I've gotten 'new' ones which are cut in half already, so they're only 1.2m long. Quite small really.

 

[beech1948]

morfa,

What are you talking about they are not sleepers but really just tinder for the fireplace :lol:

Al

 

[doorframe]

That all sounds like a lot of work for just 1 week on your own,

I'm just coming to the end of 2 weeks off work and I haven't got done half of what I hoped. I'm almost 49 and feeling every year in my aching bones. Just come in from the garden after another 12hrs graft and I'm pooped. There's a steaming hot bath running with my name on it. Looking forward to going back to work next week for a rest!

Hope to see some WIP pics.

 

[morfa]

Day one (well we didn't get home till 4pm) start picture:

 

[morfa]

Day two, nearing the end of the day.

I'm good at making extra work for myself, so decided that I needed to remove all the gravel (which we wanted to get rid off. Anyway, got the coal shed down on Monday and removed the gravel. Broke up the concrete base (you can't see it from there, but it's there) on Tuesday. Removed the last of the coal shed and loaded some of the skip yesterday. Today is skip loading day. Going quite well so far, making steady progress.

 

[morfa]

Lots of progress on this over the past few days. Here's a few more photos:

A full skip, took a whole day to fill as I was pretty tired by the end of the week:

The tree stump dug out but not quite gone:

Stump gone!

One wall ready to go.

The first wall done and the second one ready to go in.

The first wall is screwed and bedded into concrete and the second wall is sunk into a small trench and concreted into that as well. They seem pretty solid and are better than the wall that was there, which I removed most of by simply pushing it over. One more wall still to go.

 

[morfa]

Nearly there. The final wall is up:

I've just got to remove the path (and a lot of concrete rubble which was the path) and then 'oh by the way' I'm just putting some decking and a pergola up. Still it all looks quite nice now. Apart from the ground at the top, but there we go.