Finally got my line and level right on a big garden wall

For the last two weeks, I was building a 4-foot wall for a client in Oak Park. Every day, my line was just a little off, maybe a quarter inch over 20 feet. Yesterday, I slowed way down, checked every third brick with my 4-foot level, and re-set my pins twice. The last 10 feet went up perfect and straight. How do you guys keep a long run dead on?

3 comments

3 Comments

marymorgan1mo ago

My buddy swears by a story pole for long runs. He marks every course on a straight board and checks against it constantly. It saved his last big patio job.

gavine4129d ago

Ever try to eyeball a long run and end up with a slope that looks like a roller coaster? I did that on a fence line once. By the last post I was digging a two-foot hole on one end just to make the top rail look straight. A marked board would have saved me a whole lot of cussing and backfill.

kelly_coleman617h ago

Man that sounds exactly like my first deck project. Ended up with steps that felt like climbing a mountain. The story pole trick is solid, but sometimes I just run a string line with a line level. It's cheap and stops the guesswork before you even start digging. Nothing worse than having to fix a slope after all the posts are set.