The wind was so strong last Jan that it brought our fence down… as well as our brick wall. We got up to a disaster in our garden. Lots of fellow Ketteringites had fences down, trampolines over-turned and general garden mayhem, but the wind actually blew our wall column down – Andy’s look says it all. Shock!
Wall and Fence down.
After going into the neighbours garden and collecting our fence and bricks – most fell into our garden. I decided I’d try and fix it myself, I’ve never attempted brick work before and thought – “hell, how hard can it be! “
Research is always my friend and I found that the brick column should of been supported with steel bars running vertically through to strengthen it. Another botch, although I’m not sure who built the wall, so can’t really complain about it to anyone.
I had to source a handful of bricks as some had smashed with the fall. Shhhh!!!! Don’t tell anyone but I located these in next doors garden. We have to share access to their garden to get to the street which is when I came across them, it didn’t look like they were being used. The garden next door is pretty bad, overgrown and untidy. They have this weird and creepy two storey brick building at the bottom of the garden, and the bricks were scattered near this.
Next door’s creepy derelict brick outbuilding.
I figured all I needed was some cement, which I bought from B&M for £6. We used a spare bit of board behind the shed for the mixing. I had trowels already and just purchased a pointing tool from amazon for a couple of quid. Now I expected this to go very quickly and easily take me no longer than a morning.
Bricks ahoy. 
Fence gap. 
Half way there. 
Finished column – only took me all day.
I HATE bricklaying. It’s boring and time consuming and it took me all bloody day!!! I dont know why! Maybe I’m too much of perfectionist, but I won’t be in a hurry to do this again. I didn’t add the steel bars either, I figured the wall held without these for long enough. Usually I like to make sure that if I do a job I do it properly but I was trying to save money.
Bricklaying is fairly self explanitory, you pop on cement and then pop on a brick and scrap off excess cement, leveling off as you go. I only built a column, this may be different with a wall. We were lucky that the top brick was in one piece too.
Finished column and fence.
The fence went up the next morning, it was really simple and was held up via wooden batons that were attached to the wall. And voilà – all is back to semi-normal.
Helloyellowdoor 