One Day or Day One?

I took this picture on a dull, rainy day. That's actually when I think stonework looks its best — the colour comes up, the texture pops, everything just gets richer when it's wet.

I love having this wall in my yard. When I'm stressed or anxious about a project, I come out and just look at it for a while. It reminds me why I started. Why I do this.

Because I genuinely love stone. The smell when you're chiselling it. The sound it makes when you strike it right. Learning how each piece wants to be worked — because they're all different. Most of this stone was cast aside at the quarry. Scrap. No purpose. I pick it up, I see what it could be, and I give it one.

This wall started because I needed a feature wall for my Level 3 certification — the DSWA Advanced. It's been ten years since I got my Level 2, and I'd been telling myself "one day" for most of that time. A couple months before I built this, I decided one day was going to be day one.

I literally put blood, sweat and tears into this wall. I mean that. It was emotional in a way I didn't expect.

All the stone in it is scrap from other jobs — pieces going back twenty-five years. Old steps that got pulled. Flagstone from a renovation. Coping stones off a wall that came down. As I was sorting through everything, the memories just came flooding back. That piece came from a job in a particular summer. That one I remember because of the client. That one because of who I was working with. None of it is written down anywhere. It only exists in my head.

One of the throughstones — my son split that one himself. First time he ever used feathers and wedges. It's in there now, doing its job, holding the whole thing together.

Two master craftsmen flew over from England to evaluate it. They gave it about half an hour.

I've been looking at it ever since.

I wasn't an advanced waller when I started building it. But I became one through the process of building it. That's the part that got me.

Pass or fail, I was proud of it. Turns out it was enough.