The Glass Bottle Wall is Complete

HI!

UPDATE: The glass bottle wall is complete ......

A couple of days ago we spent 7 hours or so building the glass bottle wall. Going in, we were pretty sure we had enough bottle bricks made; we had nearly 150. We started by mixing up Type S mortar - the stuff used to glue bricks together in a wall. It was a pretty dry mix because we wanted to be able to build a vertical wall without all the mortar oozing out as the wall rises. The mortar was hand mixed in small batches so that it wouldn't dry before we got it into the wall. Dirty job!

I wish I had a picture of Deb working at installing the bricks. She is a wonder! She chooses a brick (to randomize the pattern), applies mud to the lower layer of bottles, styles the new bottle in place and places mud around it. Over and over again, until the batch of mud is gone. While I'm mixing the mud, she's cleaning the surface by patting it with a sponge to fill the cracks, remove excess mud, and smooth the surface. I managed to get in about 20 glass bottle blocks in place before she recognized that her talent at installation was much, much greater than mine!

Up and up and up, 3 bags of mortar mix and we're at the top of the wall space. Here's the final product ....... it's at the base of the stairs near the entry door on the main level. We'll backlight it with floods hidden in the mechanical room, and it should look great. It'll switch on when the front porch light and hall light switches are on.

We were right when we estimated the number of bottles needed for the wall ...... when we got done, we had two bottle bricks left over!

Deb is soooooo good at making the walls, we may get into the business of helping people who want them .......

Cheers!