Mazur Manor: The Wall's Collapsed!
- Jessica Mazur
- Nov 7, 2017
- 2 min read
This has been the biggest project yet, and it became a family affair.
We are incredibly blessed to have a skilled, capable and willing family - some a little more so than others. For those who know my dad, you may have experienced his passion for old houses and barns. He even thought about starting his own barn restoration gig for a little while.
He mosied on behind the barn one day and discovered that we had many stones loose. Once one tumbled, it seemed that the rest followed suit. So though we likely needed to reinforce the barn's back foundation/retention wall anyway, the project had jumped to the top of the list.
Not because it was now gone, necessarily, but because we had lost our home insurance and our new insurer agreed to a conditional policy, being: fix the barn wall by November, and we'll cover your stuff!
So, Dad got to have a little fun with the barn. No, we haven't restored it to it's historic beauty... but he did get to play with his second love, rocks. I remember growing up as a little girl on 55th & Clare, in Shawnee, where he carried boulders around the property for various reasons. These rocks were a liiiiiiittle smaller that those.
So off to Home Depot we went - concrete and mortar, mortar and concrete - we even rented a big mixer that dad towed behind his truck!
Each of us were working throughout the project, so we did our best to arrange our days on the weekends when everyone could devote a full days work! After several weekends of carefully selecting each rock and layering them up to the bottom of the barn wall, we finally reached completion... kind of...
Lucky ole me got the job assignment of helping dad place the sill plate. The only solo job I did was fill in the mortar bed underneath.
Boy were those rocks heavy. Now I know why they call skilled labor back breaking. It. Sure. Is. I even have a few souvenirs from the corrosion through my gloves while filling the bed!
We finished the wall with nearly a month of gap time til the deadline. It sure feels good to be ahead of the game for once. One more video of my strong and capable husband for ya!
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