Hersons (Connor, Kara, Jim, Anne) // Emerald Hills, CA
When did you build your wall?
Over the first half of April. Redoing the garage door took the last two weekends in April. Re-redoing the garage door took another weekend.
How long did it take you to build?
For the wall itself — two weekends — The first weekend we replaced a very old climbing 7′ wide climbing wall with a modern 8′ wide wall. The second weekend we rebuilt the legacy wall adjacent to the new wall.
Not including holds and padding, how much did it cost you to build?
$600. Approx $300 for the wall and approx $300 for the slider mechanism and associated costs to rebuild the garage door. Half the wall was recycled; otherwise the wall cost would have been double.
Did anything in particular inspire your wall design?
We wanted enough space to create reasonable endurance circuits and it was important to us to have lots of fresh air.
What was the most difficult aspect of the design and build?
We probably overthought the garage door mechanism, rebuilt the door itself, and wound up having to redo it, more than once. Also, the decision to reuse the legacy wall with odd angles made it difficult to attach, but it was a fun project and we felt good about reusing the wood.
What would you do differently?
We would have purchased a drill that goes backwards at the beginning of the project!
What is your favorite aspect?
We fit a very good sized wall into a one car garage by completely redoing the garage door — the overhead mechanism took a lot of space so by removing that and replacing with a sliding mechanism we got a great indoor/outdoor wall in a modest space.
Any words of wisdom to aspiring homewallers?
Make sure your drill goes backwards. You will make mistakes.
Do you have any connection to climbing brands or gyms?
Connor is sponsored by Petzl, Maxim and La Sportiva. Kara is co-president of the Stanford climbing team. Anne and Jim are (small) shareholders in Touchstone.
