There are over 500 blocks here, all of which I put down myself. I was VERY slow at this. I would just lay a few blocks after work everyday and then my stepdad helped me a little on the weekends. I was very careful to make sure that the blocks stayed straight and level. I used block "seconds" that I bought straight from the manufacturer for about half the price of a regular block. Regular blocks were $1.09 at the time. I bought these "seconds" for only .41-.60 each depending on what day I picked them up. The seconds are all new and there is nothing wrong with them except for the color. Some of them have some cross-coloring in them. There's red streaks in the brown blocks and brown streaks in the gray blocks. Nothing that affects the structure of the block. I knew that I would be painting them anyway, so I didn't care about the color. I also put vertical rebar in about every three columns of blocks and filled them with concrete to give the wall a little added support. I stepped down the block wall on the sides to keep with the contour of the ground. I'll be using wood framing from the ground level up. In the pics below, I still have a couple of rows of block to lay to bring it above grade.
		After all of the block were placed, I coated the outside with THREE layers of waterproofing. I also dug out a trench and built a french drain around the entire perimeter of the wall. Right now the french drain dumps out on both sides of the front of the garage but eventually I intend to bury some pipe to the drainage ditch by the road to dump all of the water out there.
		Then, I put on two layers of thick plastic and then some foam board to protect the plastic when I backfilled it with dirt.

Below Grade Block Construction