FINISHED MORTARING!

WOW! what a sense of accomplishment. Of course I had no idea how long it would take, or how many trips we'd be making, for rock and for mortar, but, we're basically done.

(there will be a few more mortaring mornings for buttress footings and interior wall footings, but that's hardly anything.)

Using the cost lists that Melissa keeps of all our expenses, I can get a pretty good estimate of how many bags of mortar we used. We bought some from 'a large box home supply store' but mostly from our local lumberyard (a price difference of $4.50 to $7.50). Any guesses?

About 240 80 lb bags. Yes, almost 10 tons of mortar...before the water is added, plus the rocks.