A bit of a makeover

This lovely young couple were heading for...what is it?...Texas Trailer Trash or something?. They just wanted the place cleaned up and a natural stone wall. No landscaping..They are doing it themselves.

Worst part was not all the concrete but the 66" bucket has 2" clearance either side coming past the house...no time for a brain fade.

The top course running off was my idea...not really..I saw it in a magazine once:blush: but it was the first time I built it.

Just out of interest, what would have you guys on the other side of thye world charged for something like this.? We did it under three days.

 

NICE improvement Squizzy!

 

How much concrete was used and how much rebar? Looks great by the way. Are you stone facing, or stucco? Or is that it?

Too difficult to saty a price not knowing the materials other than block.

 

Thats it Bill, just natural limestone in ummm...."Rustic" finish. About 4 bags of brickies cement, no reo bar. The stones are 10" thick, 14" high and 19 1/2" long. They cost me about $7 Aussie dollars each. Apart from clearing out all the crap the steps took the longest (as usual).

 

Well, around here, due to sizemic requirements, we would need rebar and latteral bar every other course, and the footing would have to be 2 1/2' x1' deep, with 2 pieces of #4 rebar (1/2") running along the footing. Typically all our CMU walls are brown coated, then the finish surface is applied, unless of course we use facade stone like El dorado or something similar to that, then we can just mud them up and paste them to the face.

All cells would have to be grouted. I can't give you an accurate number comparision, to your wall but I could say we would need to get in the high 5, low 6,000 range for the wall and steps to make any money on a wall that was left as bare block.

Your block sizes are a bit different as well. We typically have 8-8-16, or on BBQ islands, 8-6-16. (The front number is the height, the center number is the width, and last number the length) Cost for an 8-8-16 is .97 ea, well until the next raise from Katrina hits the concrete industry when they start pouring in New Orleans in about 6 months from now..

 

Bill, the first course has to be buried at least by half as the footing itself. This course also has backers i.e. a course behind it, same stones or concrete blocks in this case. For three courses non-structural we don't have to use any bar except at corners. The top course has heavy gauge wire ties, like brickies use only double the gauge.

About 6K is what I SHOULD have charged them....bloody hippies

 

Is "hippies" Australian for wild dogs??? ... oh... dingo is that one.

 

You are just leaving it like that Skuizzy?I don't even know if that would qualify as "Rustic".Did you have to do all the clean-up and prep for the site?
If you did it should be more like $6750.00 that was a real mess!

 

Its a natural limestone wall...what do you want me to do with it???...its not far off what the convicts built 200 years ago when the first settlers arrived here. There's probably about a guzzillion miles of natural limestone in West Australia, churchs built from it, houses etc. The mud will change colour with time and the wall will take on an aged appearance.

Yes we did the site clean and prep, more work in that than the wall.

 

I think it looks great, for what its worth, we don't have limestone walls out here, to some people it just looks unfinished.

I'd put that in my backyard.