Wall repair organised

I don't know exactly when I started to be a little bit worried about the dry slate retaining wall between the upstairs garden and the downstairs garden. I think I might have got a little bit more worried about it when I had a lot of business with it, at the time when I was painting the extension. I was walking around on it a lot, and was also aware of how narrow the ledge is between the extension and the face of the wall. 

Things weren't improved when in the area, two fairly similar walls came down in February. They are probably all a similar age! And I know walls are not like radionuclides; they don't have a half life, but it didn't make me feel any better about the situation.

When I had a stonemason coming round he did reassure me that the extension wouldn't come down with the wall root of four. I still prefer it not to fall down only it's only initiative! And the original stonemason was clearly a bit of a perfectionist; he didn't like slate, and would have wanted to build the wall back up in different work. I am not keen on that; firstly, my garden is an old Slate Yard! If it is demarcated by a wall, it should be a slate wall. And additionally; if you want to remove all the tonnes of slate that make up the wall now, and bring down all the tonnes of other stone to build it back up, it becomes very expensive. 

I figured I should find out if I could find someone who was willing to take the wall down, and then just put it back with the same Stone come out but now with mortar in between. I am sure slate is an imperfect material, but I am also sure that that way you could make that wall state upright for another hundred years at least! Long enough for me.

Some light googling lead me to the "my builder.com" website. There you can give a brief explanation of what job you need doing, and then companies can respond to that. You can shortlist them and invite the shortlisted companies to give you a quote. I didn't expect things to go very fast; I was just doing some preliminary googling. But I wasn't complaining when I immediately got a response from one of the shortlisted people, and he was even available to come and have a look that very same day.

Two men appeared, and they had a look. They figured they could do it with the very same stone, and as a result there "was a lot lower than that of the previous stonemason. I told them that if they could put that called into writing I would give them the job! And that happened.

If all is well, the work will start in October. It should be done in one or two weeks. And then I will have bought myself some peace of mind! I look forward to that!

The wall