Thought I could eyeball a curved garden wall, ended up taking three days

Had a job for a curved brick planter in a backyard, maybe a 15 foot run. Figured I could just set the line and bend it by feel, no big deal. Wrong. Getting the curve smooth and the courses level took forever, I kept having to pull bricks and redo sections. What should have been a one day job turned into three full days of fussing with it. Next time I'm building a proper plywood form before I even mix the mortar. Anyone have a good method for setting out a clean curve without a ton of hassle?

3 comments

3 Comments

zara_hill4626d ago

Yeah the chalk line and wood strip trick is solid for the base. But keeping it true going up is the real killer. I use a cheap garden hose to lay out the curve first, spray paint over it. Then cut a plywood template for each course. Sounds like extra work but it's faster than redoing bricks for three days.

diana_king13d ago

Love that hose trick, saved my butt on a curved patio last year.

wyatt_shah8526d ago

What kind of curve were you trying to build, like a gentle arc or a tight circle? I've tried the freehand method before and it's a total trap for making things look wobbly. For something that size, I would have snapped a chalk line on the ground for the base and used a long, flexible strip of wood as a guide to check the curve as I went up. Even that can be a pain though, which is why your form idea is probably the right move.