It ROCKS!!! What a fantastic tufa wall and an amazing first tufa project! What tools did you use for carving, and how long did you let the tufa set up before starting to carve?

Wonderful!

Eva

Wow! What I wouldn't do for some of your energy! I sure wish I would have discovered Tufa when I was 20 years younger. As it is, I have been inspired to start some weight training. Funny it took Tufa to make me want to get in better shape. You people are truly inspiring.

ROTFLMAO at Dixiesmom!
And here I thought that tufa-ing was a weight training program!!!
(and even if it's not, I'd rather lift tufa than weights any day :-)

Kathy/Longlocks

You probably have the endurance of a marathon runner if you are doing projects like this and chasing after (did you say?) three kids under 3 1/2!

Debbie

I was wondering how thick you made your "rocks" on your wall?? It looks great!

Did we ever see pictures of the completed wall? BB

Excellent wall! That play castle sounds great too! Your kids will be the envy of the block!
Leigh

I'm back- after a 2 month "break" (been busy- put the house on the market!!)---the wall is holding up well, my kids crawl all over it & all that & it is still all there. I haven't had any crumbling or major cracking yet. I didn't get around to staining it (too much time trying to keep the house in "model home" shape- with 3 toddlers HA!), but I am happy with the way it looks anyway.

I will be tufaing my new home's landscaping in the spring (yippee a blank pallette!!) & had a question regarding courtyard walls- anyone used tufa for a courtyard type wall about 48" high? Would I use a wood frame or cinder blocks......? and I want to add a small wrought iron gate if that makes any difference.

I think it will be pretty to add a courtyard to the front of my home, as well as another (yes my new house has another hill....)set of retaining walls to terrace the hill in my back yard. Those mushroom lights I saw in another thread might look really nice leading up the the courtyard......

ps- anyone had tufa withdrawls? I cant do tufa b/c of my house being on the market & I have been sitting here wanting to tufa practically everything & anything that sits still long enough.(watch out kids!!!)

I can't believe you are selling the house. Did you know this when you started the retaining wall? All that work, and you have to leave it behind. I know they build walls using concrete blocks just set up without mortar ane then they put Quickwall onto that to make a stucco type wall. Don't see why you couldn't do that with 'tufa. Still can't believe you are selling your wall!!! Hope the new owners will appreciate it!! BB

Lordy,Lordy, out of courisity,just how many bags of concrete did you use?.......sunset

Cant get to the picture-says its not accessible. Bummer. I wanted to see it. :( I'm in the process of planning a wall for my house.
heather

Please Please let me see the picture...:)

Please, post the picture again!!!

Hi all,

butterfly bush- yes, we knew we were going to sell the house... which is why we took on such a huge project all at once, we needed to cover our ugly cement block wall to make our yard prettier, and we figured that it was a great practice wall for our new house.

sunset- we used maybe 20 bags of cement, 20 bags of sand, 10 bags of peat (I highly reccomend buying a cement mixer for a large project, ours cost 185$ on sale at a discount tool store can I name where I got it?)

here is the link again, hope it works, have some recent pix of the wall on it now;
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/sutterock@sbcglobal.net/album?.dir=/4e52&.src=ph&.tok=ph7__GCBEqnjSujU

Here is a link that might be useful: tufa photo album

i posted more pictures this morning, also check out the slide show, for more details of how we did our project.

we are moving to our new home in mid march....lots of yard to tufa there yeahhhhh!

Here is a link that might be useful: 120 foot retaining wall

sorry 'bout the link being inaccessible- I thought I had fixed that. Try this one instead. If you have any questions- feel free to ask- I used cinder blocks for my structure then tufaed over it.

Here is a link that might be useful: 120 foot retaining wall

Ditto to everyone's comments.... excellent job! Thanks for taking the time to post pictures, etc.

Also, any details that you can give about how you accomplished this would be appreciated. For example, how did you make them look so individual?

Thanks so much.

Artsy [luv your name] Your ''Great Wall of Nevada'' is amazing. Thanks for the idea.

(re:your plants ....... Concrete needs to be aged with water and time to leech out the poisons that kill plants.)

Good luck in your new DIGS - pun intended- heheheh !

Shirley in Smalltownrednecktractorville, WI

bump

Oh shucks Artsymama, every link I've hit leads to me to an inaccessible file. I was hoping to look at it again because I remember it to be quite impressive. Have you moved from there yet?

Did you ever get a chance to start on the playhouse castle--sounds interesting.

Hi HowieDoin- Sorry the links don't work- perhaps they have expired? We sold the home that we built the wall at, but our new home is one big hunk of dirt. Perfect for a tufa addict. I haven't been able to do anything out in the yard yet, but I plan to start soon. I want to start with some tufa stepping stones and "fake" rocks for a dry streambed which will follow the swale on the property. We have yet another hill, so I will eventually be doing another wall....although it will be a slower process this time. I am exploring the idea of doing tufa lawn edging as well.

Hi. I just joined this forum and saw the message about the tufa wall and all the compliments. The link had expired. Is there some way you could post the photo again?

Cathy

Hi ! I would love to see the wall you did as I have one to do and thius will also be my 1st tufa project. I tried many times to follw the link but to no avail! I am DYING to see the wall...Please help me find it.....Thanks, Bev

Did anyone else save the picture of the 120 ft wall that could repost it PLEASE!

John

Hi-
I will look through my cds this weekend and try to find the pictures. I figured out why the link expired- when we moved, I could not keep the same intenet carrier or whatever (SBCglobal) because sbc is not available where I live now, so all my photos on my sbcglobal photoalbums are now inaccessible. I will create a new photosite & repost them as soon as I find them. Sorry for all the confusion- moving is really hecktic!!

LOL artsymama, guess I started a rebellion here, sorry! Gee, I wonder why finding some pictures would be trying--could it be the moving AND taking care of a bunch of little kids and everything else on your plate!

I use photobucket.com and it's a breeze. Oh please post the photos again!!!! I came here with an idea and you have already built it!!

-- Zinnia

I would love to see the photos again as well. We are purchasing a home with a horrible railroad tie retaining wall, and I was thinking of replacing it with concrete block faced with tufa rather than smooth stucco. Thanks for the great idea!

Beck

Can someone please post the pics of this please? None of the links are working...

I posted some pictures on a new yahoo photos album, hopefully it works.!

Here is a link that might be useful: pictures- I hope!

I finally got to see it!! Thank you so much! It's really impressive. Very nice work. How did the vinca hole work out? Is there any moss on it?

WOW!! Somehow in all of my reading I had missed this. That wall is truly incredible and impressive. Thank you for your persistence in getting the photos loaded for us to see.
I will be waiting and watching for your "tufa kiddy castle". What fun! I'm sure you know that there are a number of books on hay-bale building. I would think that your local library would be able to get them on inter-library loan for you.
Regards,
spiderwoman

do you have to sign up with yahoo to view someone else's pictures?

WHAT IS TUFA ?

Clairdo2, It's short for hypertufa.

The wall appears to have survived its second freezing, snowy winter. It appears to be intact & holding up nicely. Since we no longer own the property that the wall is located on, I have not had a chance to do a close inspection. I will try to take pictures if the new owners will allow it.

All moss died, the vinca hole had a vinca plant poking through it the last time I saw the hole, but I have not seen it up close in a long time.

New pictures would be nice since the first one posted doesn't work any longer. Even re-posting that one would be great.

Bump....I'd love to see it. The previous pic is gone.

For those wanting to see pictures, the last link posted above does work. I've included it again below...

Here is a link that might be useful: reposted pics of tufa retaining wall

I am late on everything. the link no longer works and with all the great comments I would love to see what the wall looks like. can anyone repost the photos?

TTT

Hi - I got an error, too:
Yahoo! Photos is now closed Yahoo! Photos has officially closed so we can focus all our efforts on Flickr, Yahoo's award winning photo sharing community.

Since June 2007, we provided Yahoo! Photos users several options to move their photos. If you did not take the opportunity to move your photos, unfortunately they are no longer available. For those users that did move your photos to another service, your photos should be waiting for you there.

I am practically slobbering to see these pictures.

o-someone-please can you find another site that will host them?

Me too Tansy!!! I WANNA look!!!

I second this: I've been trying to access every single link and...nothing.
I am now desperate to see this retaininh wall.
Catherine

I third this. Or is it fourth? Anyone save the pictures on something accessible to us johnny-come-latelies?

Missing out on the glory that is the Great Wall of 'Tufa,

Rain

I happened to stop by the forum to look up information on cement dyes & lo & behold my old post was on the first page, so I took a look & apparently all of my photos are gone. I don't know where the original CD's are right now, but we just built yet another wall that is at least 300 feet. (This is the wall I am looking for advice on cement dyes)

[URL=http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk141/deesphotos_photos/300%20foot%20hypertufa%20wall/CIMG9665.jpg][IMG]http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk141/deesphotos_photos/300%20foot%20hypertufa%20wall/th_CIMG9665.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk141/deesphotos_photos/300%20foot%20hypertufa%20wall/CIMG9663.jpg][IMG]http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk141/deesphotos_photos/300%20foot%20hypertufa%20wall/th_CIMG9663.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk141/deesphotos_photos/300%20foot%20hypertufa%20wall/CIMG9664.jpg][IMG]http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk141/deesphotos_photos/300%20foot%20hypertufa%20wall/th_CIMG9664.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Sorry, the links in the above post did not work. I tried again.

Here is a link that might be useful: 300 foot tufa wall

OOHH! MI!

What a job well done!!

I am totally jealous!

I sure hope you will give us some info on the technique!

Does anyone know where I can view a current picture of the 120ft. wall? The photolink posted on the original message no longer works. I recently came across several posts referring to artsymama's wall & would like to see the example.

Me too! I just went thr all the old posts trying to see if any of the links worked.