A couple of weeks ago while building the stone wall, a neighbor asked me how I learned to do this. I was tempted to say something witty like “I was a stone mason in a previous life, working on the Great Wall of China”. Instead, the truth came out: “Everything I know, I learned from the internet.”

Okay, that’s not entirely true, because I do read (skim) lots of home improvement books.

Here is my wall building process, which was compiled from books as well as the internet:

First: Dig. Then dig some more, and when you think you’re done, dig some more. I had flashbacks of working on the driveway during this process.

digging
A pallet and a half of stone next to the trench that’s being dug.

Essentially, the trench needs to be a few inches below the base of the wall and at least a few inches wider. The first layer is usually gravel. I laid down some landscape fabric below the gravel to separate it from the dirt below. Then the gravel was tamped down.

gravel underneath
A layer of gravel a couple of inches below grade.

Many resources say to look through as much of the stone as possible to sort which would make the best base stones, cap stones, corner stones and wall stones. The cap stones should be the heaviest and have a flat top side. The base stones should be the next heaviest. Corner stones should have a 90 degree angle, and wall stones should have a fairly straight edge on one of its side.

Another concept gleaned from many books and websites, is to build up the corners first, and have your work meet up in the middle. This way, corner stones can easily be set first, and middle pieces can be chipped away to fit properly.

starting from the corner
Start building up the ends first.

Gravel or pea stones are used to fill in the spaces at the back side of the wall.

side view
Side view of the wall, next to my stone working (stone smashing) station.

This sounds easy on paper, but in reality the process takes much longer. Just setting up, selecting stones and breaking stones takes up most of the day.

Update: The stone wall has since been finished

Update: Wall has been capped