Need ideas for feature wall

[BMarchant]

Hi all, 

we have been wanting to upgrade the front of our house with a stone feature all. This would involve covering the existing rocks with something and then gluing the stone cladding onto it. 
Wanting to ask what kind of material could I use to frame it up, something strong enough for the stone cladding. 
See a photo of the current situation and a photo of the wall we are after. Plan is to get rid of the agaves and plants and just have the frangipani as the feature tree. 

[EricL]

Hello @BMarchant 

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. It's sensational to have you join us, and thanks for sharing your question about building a feature wall.

I propose building a timber frame from 100 x 100mm 2.4m Post H4 Treated Pine Wet CCA - 2.4m and 90 x 45mm 3.9m MGP10 H4 Treated Outdoor Structural Radiata Pine. The frame can surround the stone wall and you can leave an opening at the top so that the topsoil of the frangipani is still exposed. The frame can then be covered with cement sheeting, and the stone cladding can be attached to the cement sheeting. 

Your stone wall releases moisture when rain enters from the top, therefore anything painted or placed on top of it will get damaged due to the moisture coming out. By creating a gap with a timber frame, the moisture still comes out but will not damage the timber frame or cement sheeting.  

Let me call on our experienced members @Dave-1 and @AlanM52 for their recommendations.

If you need further assistance, please let us know.

Eric

[AlanM52]

Hi @BMarchant,

I suggest a besser block wall using this narrower block:

If you want to discuss some more come back and we can chat about the gravel base, using building adhesive to lay the blocks instead of mortar and reinforcing with star pickets and dry 50/50 mortar/sand mix.

Cheers

[BMarchant]

Thank you Eric, much appreciated. I’ll look into the concrete sheets. My brother is a plasterer so he can help with the framing although I’m worried about having to dig those posts into the ground as it’s very rocky. 
Do you think I could back fill the gap between the existing rocks and the new wall with top soil or fill so the grass grows over it to the new wall or will I have issues doing this?

[BMarchant]

Hi Alan, thank you. I like the affordability of these blocks! Will this require any digging? I would love some more info about the base and reinforcement when you have time please. 

[JacobZ]

Hi @BMarchant,

You wouldn't be able to backfill behind the wall if you were to build a timber frame, as the cement sheets are not capable of retaining weight.

If you used the besser blocks that @AlanM52 has mentioned and installed them with reinforcing, then you could backfill behind the wall.

Instead of using the timber posts and framing, you could build a basic retaining wall with timber sleepers and retaining posts then attach the cement sheeting to the face of the sleepers before cladding. This would enable you to backfill behind the wall and grow grass as you had planned.

Let me know what you think and if you have further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Jacob

[Dave-1]

Good morning @BMarchant 

Thinking outside the box (otherwise I do like @EricL 's and @AlanM52's suggestions, and talking into consideration that you have rocks in the ground that may be a pain to dig holes, how about using the existing rocks more effectivly?

The rocks you have look like sandstone, you can break these with a cold chisel and a pound hammer (sledge hammer may be overkill) just find the lines on the rocks (you will see them easily enough as they kinda look like cracks or flow lines) and using the cold chisel at that point plus the pound hammer you can sheer the rocks apart.

Then you could use the nicest looking faces of the rocks you have just sheered off to face the front  of the wall, leavingt he bigger rocks as the base of the wall. You will need a few more rocks to get it to the letter box height but stone stacking is like tetris, mortaring them in place as you go up. I would suggets to dry stack the stones first to see how you like the look and then rebuild with mortar. (you need it between the rocks to make solid, I have used old waste rocks on the inside as fill. You could do that with the rear side of the wall with the garden bed and frangipani.

Dave