Hit 500 mortar joints on a single wall today and it messed with my head

I was laying a long garden wall for a client in Oakville and counted exactly 500 mortar joints after finishing yesterday. That number hit me hard because I never realized how MANY repetitive motions go into even a small job like this 12-foot section. Has anyone else ever counted their joints on a project and been surprised at the total?

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2 Comments

holly_young3516d ago

...and my buddy Mike who does brickwork said the same thing happened to him on a big retaining wall. He was about halfway through a 40-foot run and started counting his trowel loads. Hit 600 and had to stop because it made his brain go fuzzy. Said he just stared at the wall for a good five minutes trying to wrap his head around how many little motions it takes to build something that doesn't look like much.

the_karen16d ago

That bit about "how many little motions it takes to build something that doesn't look like much" really hit me. An old friend of mine was helping his dad lay a concrete patio one summer, and he decided to count every single time he pushed his trowel across the surface. By the end of a 10x10 section, he was at over 2,000 passes and said he felt like his hand was going to fall off before they even started the next slab. He told me it changed how he looks at any concrete work forever, just seeing it as thousands of tiny moves instead of one big slab. Makes you wonder if every big thing is just a bunch of tiny, boring actions stacked together, doesn't it?