We live on a steep hill. One night our friends almost backed right off the side of the hill as they were parking so I decided this was a good place to build a decorative cement wall to prevent that scenario from happening again. I started bay using cinder block to build the base. I built this up to the level of the driveway. Then I used chicken wire, bottles, rocks and bricks to build up about 3 feet of wall. I also filled areas with scraps of cement board left over from a bathroom renovation. I then placed planters into the construction as I wanted to soften the wall with plants. Yesterday my friend Tammy Marquez came to help me mix mud and throw it at the wall. She wanted to learn the technique and I got the fringe benefit of strong muscles lifting the heavy bags of cement. She laughed so hard when she saw my technique of throwing the cement at the wall to get it into the cracks between the bottles and chicken wire.

We built up the wall with two loads of cement. These days I have my own cement mixer so the process went fast. You can see that the surface is still very rough. I think about two more loads of cement will fill the wall and then I will begin to do some sculpture and mosaic work to make it interesting. I have been saving broken glass, shells and other things to use in the mosaic part. I am probably going to take the snakelike shapes and turn them into lizards. Then I will add mosaic patterns over the cement shapes. Last I will put a colored grout over the mosaics.