Contacted to look at a wall in disrepair, I ended up completely rebuilding a drystone wall at a dentist’s office just outside of downtown Asheville. I added a stone bench to the street side of the wall to invite neighbors and passersby to sit and enjoy the space. Click on the image above for a huge panoramic view of the project.

A ten year old drystone wall is still just a baby, but this poorly built example was already collapsing on itself. The wall was traced, meaning many of the stones were too shallow, and there was no fill to speak of. The only recourse was to tear it all down and rebuild.

The stones throughout the wall are very similar in size which makes the overall piece boring to look at.

A steep batter to the face of the wall and the absence of any structural fill caused this wall to collapse. The top of the wall sat over the backfill which was mostly loose soil. The top of the wall settled and it applied downward force on the fill, which sought a way out. Since the structure of the wall was so flimsy, it pushed the bottom of the wall out of place in short order.

I lessened the batter and built the new wall in such a way that the top of the wall sits squarely over the base. I wrapped the back of the wall with geotextile fabric which prevents the fill from silting up, which prolongs the life span of the wall.

In this image one can see the depth and structure of the wall. I used junk stone from the old wall, a torn up concrete walkway and scrap granite countertops as well as gravel for my backfill. Here the wall turns 90 degrees from the street and runs alongside the office parking lot. The cap runs level across the length, but the bottom rises until the wall tapers away to nothing.

The bench, the seat back and the arm rests were all cut from a single slab of sandstone. I cut the big pieces with feathers and wedges and trimmed the edges with the chisels. The sidewalk slopes along this face, so the bench varies in height, though the sitting surface and arm rests are level. The wall steps up just past the bench to catch the growing earth bank.

This wall has an interesting color mix. I reused the stone from the original wall which had developed a green patina of algae over the few years it had been there. Many of the faces were so funky though that I had to trim them to get the look I wanted, so there’s a lot of fresh stone showing as well, including the very red cap. There wasn’t enough stone in the original wall to complete the rebuild so I supplemented with several different types of Tennessee sandstone, looking to vary the sizes as well color. As is usually the case, there are cubby holes and marbles tucked into the wall, there to reward closer attention.

See if you can find the marble in the image at the bottom of the page.