My poor stone wall!!

Yesterday, a large delivery truck accidentally backed into the corner of my beautifully constructed stone wall. There wasn't much damage done to the truck, but the wall came tumbling down. We now wait for repairs to be made and hopefully this won't happen again! Please let me know if this kind of thing has happened to you, I always enjoy your comments.

Comments

[John Turner]

This is classic,
This stuff seems to happen to me all of the time, very frustrating! Thank you for sharing..

John

[Andrew Ritchie]

Thankfully no one (or pet) was hurt!

-Andrew

[gardenlady]

I can sympathise with you,Martha.
The guys on the forklifts just can't seem to miss my plant tables at my Home Depot.

[Melissa at MasterPiece Weddings]

This happened to me as well, except it was in the center of the wall. I guess the blind spots are just 'that' bad.
It's since been fixed, but the color of the stone is just slightly off. I notice it, but my husband tell me that no one else does. (I think this is just to pacify me)
Good Luck!

[Debbie]

This happened to us when a garbage truck took off part of our roof!

I love your fence---it reminds me of those I see in Ireland.

I know you will find a wonderful craftsperson who can fix it!

Thank you for your blog Martha!

[Kristin]

The Internet is such a confessional, and since you asked... A few years ago I was trying to back a big truck into a narrow driveway with about 5 inches clearance on either side. I heard a little scraping sound and thinking that I just dinged the side of the truck a little, I ran in, threw the keys down in front of my husband and said, "You do it!". Well, he came back asking for help in reassembling the wall first. Luckily the stones were some sort of lightweight volcanic rock and went back together pretty easily.

[fossilswatchguy]

Martha, I have a friend who rebuilds walls like this. It's a talent to build walls like this, and there are always extra pieces. Good luck with the rebuild.

[Barbara FIght]

Your stone wall is beautiful. Did an artisan do it and will he (or she?) be the one to repair it? If I ever move from my apartment to a house, I would love to have a stone wall just like it.
WERE YOU THERE WHEN IT HAPPENED?

[Margie]

Yes, Martha, these things have happened to me. I would give you a list but sometimes it works better to think postive thoughts....... I also know the trucks it takes to deliver things and sometimes we create very difficult obstacle/optical courses.
Looks like a power of ten that hit the rock corner. Hmmmm. Was the road slick?

[Kerry Gavin]

Martha, We are sitting here now waiting for Masonary companies to call us back for estimates. A sixteen year old boy backed into our block fence and not too much damage to his truck, but a huge whole on the side of our yard!!! We received a call from the police to watch for wandering coyotes that have been sighted in our neighborhood, so we are a little nervous we may have some company soon!!! Good Luck with your wall!!! Kerry,from AZ.

[Charlie]

Hi Martha,
You would not believe this but last year I found the corner of my stone wall in pieces in my driveway. It had snowed and I just know it was my plow guy who knocked it down. Upon questioning, he denied it and said he saw a yellow truck on the road at the same time. I had to pay for the repair but it's crumbling apart again. Hope you have better luck!

[Alcea Alba]

Yes Martha, since you asked, things like this do happen. In fact, just last week, I took delivery of my six burner range and to my disbelieve, as the delivery truck driver was pulling away from the corner of my house, he took down half the tree with him. Unbelievable!! Oh, he didn't stop either. Good luck with the repair of your wall. Alas, my tree will live, but it will take years to grow and repair itself.

[Remi]

The propane delivery truck driver backed right into my rock wall destroying a good part of it. People don't have respect for those rock walls.I feel sorry for them!!

[Ann]

My grandparents had a long narrow driveway, just big enough for a single row of cars with a pair of big brick columns at the entrance. Family gatherings always required the jockeying of cars, rearranged to the comings and goings of their guests. One Christmas, when I was about 10, I spied my father coming in the side door with the most sheepish look upon his face. I asked him what was up and he reluctantly admitted that he had backed into and knocked over one of the stately brick posts. Oops!! It was our secret - at least for a few moments.

[Janie]

Oh dear, well just think how nice it will be when the repairs are finished! I am sorry for you and the anquish you must feel. You are such a tidy person and to have it in such a state I am sure is not a great feeling for you. Hopefully, the next folks in the next delivery truck will be more aware. Best wishes, to you. Make sure they do it right!

[Dawn from Mt. St. Helens]

Yes this happens to me also!
Last year my husband and I made our resort just beautiful with tons of flowers in baskets and galvanized tubs. The one big tub is in a corner spot and got smashed by someone. I was really upset that nobody said anything. Most of our guests are frequent flyers (repeat). I was convinced they would let us know. I went on and on about it, then my husband finally confessed he had done it backing up with the horse trailer.
You just gotta laugh!

[Crissy Stone]

What a beautiful wall! I hope you can get it fixed up just perfectly. This sort of thing did happen to my husband and me. During an ice storm, an emergency response truck tried to use our driveway as a turn-around. He pulled over and just started sliding. We watched helplessly as he slowly slid down our steep driveway into all three parked cars, two of which pushed forward into the house. In the repair process we put up our own stone wall, I just hope it doesn't happen again! Best of luck getting your wall back to good.

[Trish]

Lucky for me I don't have a stone wall for some errant driver to "play" Jenga with! Someone did run over my mailbox not too long ago though and broke it in about 10 pieces. It was a Victoria looking one that we are all required to have in our neighborhood, which I don't like but it got voted in. The plastic replacement one we ended up with cost more than the original; same design though. I think your wall is going to take a miracle to get it back together again. Please post a picture of that miracle when it's done! Trish

[Paula]

Martha Iam a truck driver who picks up milk from the farms, one of my farmers in Kent Ct., has a wall just like that and another hauler did the same thing to their wall. Lucky for them they build stonewalls (dry ones like yours)

[Bioplar Christy]

I'm so sorry that awful thing happend to you, Martha. Home repairs seem so constant in my house that I can absolutely sympathize... I certainly hope the delivery man/company owner offered to pay for the repairs. Anything less would be unfair... Good luck!

[kathleen]

I feel for you. We all, at some time experience this type of situation. I have viewed your segment on your expert who creates stone walls. I am sure that this will have a positive outcome and all will be satisfied with the outcome. I have learned that owning a home, or anything for that matter becomes a work in progress. In remodeling our home, my husband and I expected things would not always go "as planned". I appreciated the comment of another who stated, "you just need to laugh". Looking forward to seeing the finished product!!

[lucy]

Oh my goodness--what a terrible thing to happen!! I would have been soooooo upset! Hopefully it can be repaired back to its originally glory.

The only backing up crisis I've encountered was when someone borrowed my car and somehow missed the telephone pole behind him!!! You wonder what people are thinking sometimes!

[Carol in NC]

Oh Martha! What a mess. I know it can be repaired but just having to see it in disarray is aggrevating enough. Luck Stone in NC could probably do a great job. I hope it's fixed soon. Maybe you should paint the corners orange! Just kidding.

[Rob]

What a shame. I just drove by your beautiful home last weekend and thought to myself, "I love that wall!"

[Nori]

Two things: By synchronicity, I read your post before I went to the Orion Magazine website, and there, from the Jan/Feb 2008 issue, is an article called "The Nature of Walls: Why we build them, how they fail us" by John Piasecki. He makes a good point. Also, if you've never seen the magazine or the website, check it out: excellent writing, important and pertinent subject matter. www.orionmagazine.org

Secondly, in looking at the visually lovely design of your wall, I notice two things that I think relate to the wall being less sturdy than if it was built another way. The small stones are used as a design element, and are located together, creating a vein along the top section of the wall, and again in a lower section, again creating a rhythmic element of the design, but you can see how those sections of small stones don't tie in to the rest of the wall. This translates to less stability in the wall. Then, the inside of the wall is rubble-stone, a filling, rather than a continuation of fit-together, front-to-back, locked-in-place bond throughout the wall. This also reduces the strength of the wall. With normal wear-and-tear of weather, these kinds of walls will tumble long before the older style, complete-built ones, especially if a truck backs into it! However, even with a well-built wall with the different-sized stones distributed evenly throughout, and a tied-in center, a wall will eventually relax its shoulders after withstanding the freeze-and-thaw cycles for decades, or even a hundred years or more. As Robert Frost said, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

The builder should be able to rebuild it, although it won't really be any fun.

A wall is an expensive thing, unless you're removing stone from your field, and need to put it somewhere, and there's no TV, so you spend what might be "free time" fitting stone one over two, one over two, one over two. I guess it's how we used to learn patience and perserverence.