Today I am a Mason

Our home's property sits on a corner of two streets that join at a "T" intersection. The yard is sunken and a lovely stone wall runs adjacent to one of the streets. Earlier this week a vehicle made contact with the wall and damaged it.

This part of the wall has been reduced to crumbles. (shot from the street looking down into the yard)

It may be hard to tell in this shot, but the damaged portion of the wall is now slightly bulging near the rust-colored horizontal and the white triangle stones. (shot from the yard looking toward the adjacent street)

I think this might be a project I can handle... first—clean the area and stones of old mortar.

I moved a small chunk of old mortar and the whole section collapsed! Thankfully the stones missed my feet when they fell!

Thankfully I took pics before it collapsed. Hopefully that will help me figure out where all of the pieces go when I go to reassemble it!

Another section of the wall has some loose stones too. I decided to start down there so I could get my bearings and work out the technique before tackling the larger problem.

A car hit the corner of this wall a couple of years ago and loosened up some stones at the end.

Another "before" shot.

 And... VOILA!  This is what 60 lbs. of mortar looks like (my back is not happy about this project)!

Only the top layer of stones has been reset here.

Not too bad for my first time at masonry! I'm feeling pretty good about the process and am looking forward to getting the other section of the wall started.

The rocks behind the iris are for decoration and not part of my construction project.

Check back in a couple of days to see my progress!