Low Rent Renaissance

I've been building this wall (for months now?) using "slip forms" made from some plywood.

This is a sort of low-rent papercrete mixer that does well for small volumes and might do ever better if I pulled it with my truck instead of my lawn mower. I actually tried it with the truck the first time I used it, but the truck is old and can't take the wear and tear--all that stopping and starting and rolling along at one or two miles per hour--so I just felt more comfortable pulling the mixer around with the lawn mower. I call it low rent because, while most tow mixers involve some welding, this one is made primarily of a piece of fairly thick treated plywood I happened to have laying about from an earlier project. Plywood was not my first choice. I'd been inspired by some guys online who'd made tow mixers out of the rear axels of trucks. One lucky guy in particular told a tale in which the junk man sold him the axel for $25 and, excited by the idea of papercrete, welded the hitch and other metal supports for nothing. I didn't have that kind of luck. The junk yard...

It cost about $600 for a guy to install vinyl skirting around our double-wide mobile home. Skirting is a requirement in our county. There was no concrete or other structures to deal with, so our job was a piece of cake for the guy, who just secured the lower track by pushing long nails into the dirt and secured the skirting up top with wood screws. Within the first few months we had covered holes made with our string trimmer with duct tape. Pretty soon there were too many holes to cover. Then the high winds came and and beat the crap out of it--one side completely out of the track and pushed in under the house. I put it back in the track, but it was all bent up. It needed replacing. I wanted something better. Brick, I was thinking. Or cement block. I was intimidated by the cost. I thought about some sort of stucco over metal lathe over plywood. It was the plywood that made me think I might be replacing that in 20 years. If I live another 20 years, I'll be 74. Nope. I...