Custom Firepit and Granite Benches Landscape Installation and Stone Work in Pulaski Heights
Landscape Design and Materials
When this homeowner came to us he already had a design for completely renovating most his yard. For this part of the backyard the concept was to create a small lawn area surrounded on one side by a short retaining wall and on two sides by benches, utilizing reclaimed granite curbstones that were already on the property. In the front yard of this house we had already built a granite retaining wall with a concrete cap, the goal being to marry the clean, modern look of the house's cast concrete steps and foundation walls and the old style of granite stonework found in the neighborhood. For the backyard we repeated this motif: the retaining wall would be built from granite and the granite curb benches would sit on industrial looking concrete I-beam-shaped legs. The fire pit would invert the style of the front yard retaining wall: concrete walls would be capped with granite.
Retaining Wall Construction
The short retaining wall was built at bench height so that several of the granite curbs could be used as caps, creating benches integrated into the wall at the same height as the free standing benches. The wall also served to reconcile the grade of the neighboring lot with the new flat lawn in the center of this area. We built the wall using a hybrid of dry stone and mortared stone techniques: the face stones are chosen, shaped and placed according to the traditional methods of dry stone wall construction, which allows the wall to maintain strength even if there is some flexing in the future. To avoid having to build a hidden "back wall" behind the face stones, as is neccessary for a fully dry stacked retaining wall to be structurally sound, mortar is utilized as shims between some of the stones in a way that locks the back of the wall together but also still allows water to drain though the face of the wall. This technique is not right for every retainging wall, but when used appropriately it saves material, time and money without sacrificing durability and strength, and in this case also allows more space for the bushes we planted behind the wall.
Firepit Installation
The firepit is designed to reduce the amount of smoke by supplying extra air to the fire through the four holes in the firepit walls, the outside of which we cast in place out of concrete. The inside walls are built from fire brick and fire clay mortar. The cap stones we roughed out of granite slabs using the feather and wedge technique for splitting stone. Holes are drilled and then wedges are hammered into the holes to create the pressure that causes the stone to split. Pictured above are the roughed out capstones. We then further trimmed the stones to the correct shape using hand chisels and a paper pattern before mortaring them onto the firepit.
