Masonry time

Kelley had a good idea. It's not an unusual occurrence, but when it leads to more work for me I might hesitate to go along with it. She was scared that masonry was going to be hard to learn and thought there was a pretty good chance that I was going to fuck up the front of the house if my first time trying to lay brick was on the front porch foundation. So the good idea was that I should try a test project, something small in the backyard. Take the same approach I wanted to do for the front porch and fuck up a small corner of the backyard instead of the dead center of the front of the house.

So I decided to build a table or a bench or something. The technique to comply with the building code was to pour a 6" thick foundation slab that extended at least 2" beyond the brick on all sides, and deep enough to get at least 2 bricks underground. After some layout options, I went with a rectangle pattern that took 10 bricks per course. Used the dry run to measure the outline for the foundation. So let's dig!

That's a hole

It's kind of a deep hole

Then I filled it in with concrete

Nice foundation

Perhaps I could have gone a bit deeper. Isn't that usually the case with concrete? I poured two 80 lb bags of high-strength quickrete in there and let it cure for about 48 hours. The key, I think, is that it came out perfectly flat and smooth. This would turn out to be a key. It's level and flat.

I used 60 lbs bags of Quickrete Mortar Mix to set the brick. It was easy and consistent, just add water. No mixing mortar and sand to get the ratio just right, this was simple. I could set 4 courses (or 40 bricks) with one bag of mortar mix. The key to the entire project is getting the first row down right.

My first course of brick ever

How I really feel about masonry

First four courses are down!

I had to get the corners on the first row exactly square. The thickness of the mortar between the brick and the foundation had to create a level first course. I used a 2' level and a speed square to be sure everything was exact. Once the first course was down, level, and square, the next 3 courses went up pretty quickly.

When you get too many courses of brick laid down too quickly, the weight of the brick and mortar can compress the lower courses so I decided to stop there. Plus I didn't really want to mix up another full bag of mortar and lay 4 more courses of brick that afternoon. So I went ahead and tuck pointed those 4 rows and called it a day. Totally forgot to wash the brick down.

I learned how to lay brick totally from watching youtube videos. By the end of this setup, my back was really hurting. This may turn out to be a really cool bad idea!