Photos of the Back Wall

Finally, I have some new pictures to share. I have been stingy with pictures this year, because I have been doing more deconstructing than building--until now. Unfortunately, my camera is at the shop, so these are taken from my phone.

I must say, I am rather proud of how this wall has turned out. The first two pictures show it in its nearly final form, from a couple of angles. Some of the clear caulk is still drying, and I have a couple of small gaps still to fill, but it is 95% there.

Below is how the wall looked just after removing the concrete form. The window frame was unfinished and the wall was very rough with large gaps and pock marks all over. Using a product called Cement All, I was able to not only fill in the gaps and blemishes, but give the whole wall a stuccoed look that you see in the pictures above.

Here is the wall before I removed the form.

I was able to re-use almost all of the wood from the previous incarnation of the wall to build the form. The form itself was probably harder than anything else to build. It was quite tricky trying to figure out how to do it in such away that would result in an attractive wall, be structurally sound, and also enable me to get the concrete poured in evenly. I had to pour and build the form as I went up. It was actually done in two pours, the first up to about 3 inches above the cinder-block wall, and then the rest a couple of weeks later--this past weekend in fact. The last pour was in two stages while the cement was still wet. First, I poured up to about the height of the window, with the upper part of the form removed. Then I hurried and build the upper part of the form and kept pouring--building the form as I went up, until I poured the last bit through a square hole at the top of the form.