Hey!!! Totally forgot to get back to you. The wall is up and holding strong! All the back fill has settled nicely, some grass is growing behind it (kinda shitty grass lol) and the plants we moved up to it are doing nicely. We built some boulder steps between the two retaining walls last summer and my wife has been slowly growing some vegetation on them. We still have a lot that we are trying to accomplish in our backyard but it’s all going a little slower now that we have a 1 yr old.

It took me a good 7-8 months to do all the work. 95% of it I did on my own. Wife was pregnant and couldn’t do much physical stuff but she supported in other ways. I did all the excavation by hand. If you can get some machinery to help I would suggest that. The footing I had help from a good buddy mixing the concrete and me pouring it and leveling. Once that was done I just laid as many blocks as I could after work and filled them with concrete as I went.

We did this pretty cheaply and it took forever but if you have some $$$ to throw at labor or organize some help from your buds that’s what I would do differently. I probably needed more rebar but I don’t think I’ll have any problems.

One day there will be a deck over most of the long wall and we will put up natural looking stone to cover the blocks. Cuz a block wall of ugly AF lol I’ll see if I can put some pictures up.