A Railroad Tie Fiasco

You ever do something to save a few bucks only to find out that long-term you've just cost yourself even more time and money?

Well, let me tell you about our railroad tie fiasco...

So, you may remember that we had a concrete patio put in last spring and, although we love it, it made an already dangerously steep hill even steeper and the dirt was starting to move away from the patio, which once winter came, would crack it apart.  In addition, my kids have been complaining about not having a level, grassy area out back for playing and so we decided to solve both problems by putting in a retaining wall.

Almost halfway done with installing
the timbers; time for the deadmen!

With winter on its way, we needed to work fast.  Although I would have preferred a stone, or even landscape block, retaining wall, those didn't seem to fit our needs.  We needed something we could put in cheap and fast, with little skill level and by ourselves.  (We have to save our pennies for the basement remodel we've started.)  Both our next-door neighbors used railroad timbers in their retaining walls, and our yard has some too, so it seemed like a nice bit of landscaping continuity if we used railroad ties.  We figured they'd be fast, cheap and easy.  (We knew they wouldn't be pretty.)

Once we had a weekend available, we did some measuring and drove to Menard's to get the ties.  What a nightmare!  Railroad ties are so heavy, my husband and I can barely lift them.  They were also too heavy for our minivan. We had to split the load so it took multiple trips.

Crushed gravel for under the timbers.  

We knew we needed to dig out a couple of inches for a crushed gravel pad.  But after my father talked to us and we did some research on the 'net, we found out we also needed to put gravel behind the ties for drainage; Because the grade was so steep, digging turned out to be a major task and took several days instead of the couple of hours I originally figured.

Our "have it done in a weekend" project was now a multiple week project.  We ordered crushed gravel for underneath the timbers and #1 size gravel for behind them, delivered to the project site.  A convenient time-saver I highly recommend.

We put down the gravel pad, and started laying the first course of timbers, which was shockingly difficult. Not only do the timbers need to be level length-wise along the wall, they also need to be level (actually, leaning a bit towards the hill) cross-wise.  The timbers aren't cut precisely so we had to use string and stakes to get the level correct.  We also had to do some much deeper digging for one section of the gravel pad because the hill was steeper in one  spot than in another.  Another week went by.

Trying to spare tree roots was a major concern while digging;
it doubled the amount of time it took to dig out the trench

When my husband tried to hammer stakes into the timbers to keep them together, we were once again reminded of what a pain these railroad ties are.  The stakes couldn't get hammered in, even with using a sledge hammer.  Our drill just wasn't cut out for the job.  So, Craigslist was called into the effort and a week later we had a drill that could handle a 1/2" bit that is 13" long.  That solved the stake issue.

Another time-drainer: we found out cutting through those dense ties was close to impossible.  My husband resorted to using a chainsaw, but even that took more time than we thought it would.

It's now been over a month since we started the wall-from-Hades project. Yesterday we had a couple of hours (before it started raining) to lay down the 2nd and 3rd course of timbers, which we did.  Today my back hurts.  Those suckers are crazy heavy.  So much for "ease of installation."

Leveling the base was a job I left to my husband
with  his awesome math skills; I stuck to the grunt work

Since the timbers are too heavy for me to work on by myself, our available work time is severely limited.   We still have two more courses to go, as well as laying the deadmen, the drain pipe and backfilling with dirt. We are moving so slowly that after our efforts yesterday, my husband called our contractor and asked if he wanted to finish the wall for us.  So much for doing it ourselves to save money.

What's worse is that I chatted with both of my neighbors yesterday.  Turns out the one with all the railroad tie retaining walls (that we can see clearly from our back yard, just signed a contract to have them all ripped out and replace them with beautiful stone walls.  The other neighbor is also taking out his railroad ties and putting in landscaping block.  So much for visual continuity.

Ugh.