Well project

[Pharm]

We had an old house on our property that was taken down a couple of years ago due to safety issues. Hated to take it down since it had a lot of family history behind it. (My Dad was born in this house). It was built during the Civil war.



We took down the house but decided to try and do something with the well on the property. We decided to try and create something with the rock from the chimney of the old house. I can't imagine the effort it took to create the chimney originally without the use of modern tools we have today. Here is a picture of the well as it looked a couple of years ago:



After the house was taken down we had a lot of rock from the chimney. Knowing some of the family history of the house and the well - we wanted to do something with the rock as a kind of memorial to the history of the property, so we decided to put a rock enclosure around the original brick structure of the well.

The original rock Chimney:



And rock left over:



And the well:



More pictures on the way.

 

[Pharm]

After a few months of planning we had kind of an idea of what we wanted. We wanted to keep as much of the rock from the chimney that we could. We decided to build a rock wall around the original brick structure - that rock is HEAVY. We had to bring in some help since we couldn't do it ourselves.

My son told me I should try google sketch-up. I had never used it before and it shows ... but it did help me to kind of visualize what I wanted.



I got frustrated with google sketch-up so I went back to the old fashion way of drawing up plans with a pencil and paper. We saw a entrance to some apartments that gave us an idea of what kind of roof we wanted on the structure:



With our ideas and plans somewhat in place it was time to get started.

 

[Pharm]

I unfortunately don't have pictures of every step taken during our project. We did have the rock enclosure made a few months ago. Rock was put in place and mortared in.



Posts were attached to rock.





Hopefully we'll have most of the structure completed by next week. I won't be able to post any pictures until then but I'll be sure to update. Gotta work this weekend at my day job.

 

[creekbend]

I'm sure that you have heard the saying "If that Home could only talk". Can you just imagine how many memories originated in that Home? I was raised in East Tennessee and I can identify with you wanting to preserve some of the past. I tip my hat to you and respect you for your endeavor. Best wishes. Thanks for posting.

 

[forgeblast]

That stone is amazing, really nice shape and color to it. congrats on reusing it.

 

[Stick895]

Too bad you couldn't have left the chimney standing, you could have made a whale of a bbq pit out of it!

 

[Pharm]

Thanks for the comments. We plan on putting a metal grate on soon for safety and adding some kind of plaque. We might have something etched into the rock by a tombstone dealer at the front - but that can wait.

As far as the BBQ pit, that still might be in the future. We still have a lot of rock left.:thumbsup:

 

[crbr]

Thanks for the pictures

 

[Pharm]

We finally finished the project. We plan on staining the wood brown and doing some landscaping around it. We've got quite a bit of rock left so we'll see if we can do something else with it.

Here's the pics:



Here is a picture of the grate:









Still have a few things to do but the major stuff is out of the way.

 

[Artisan]

Nice!