Starting the brickwork

The brickwork on my front porch includes the veneer around all of the concrete block, the posts to support the roof, the handrails on the sides, and the stairs. Lots of brickwork. It begins by digging out for the posts & stairs, dry fitting how I wanted to design the brickwork, and then pouring the brick shelf (flat concrete surface like a footer for the brick). Most of the brick shelf would feed off of the foundation below the concrete block, making that first layer of brick sit on a solid foot of concrete.

The stairs really determined the final height of the brick shelf. The dry fit to run one course horizontally and top it with one course on edge gave me a "rise" for the stairs of 7 1/4". I wanted that rise to happen 5 times and end with the top step including the height of the flooring. So you see flooring and 2 courses of bricks as the top step, then 4 other steps below that. I picked a 13" run and had my stair dimensions on paper.

On the side of the stairs we want to use knee walls to frame it up. Walls that come up about knee high add space for decorating seasonally that Kelley really wants, and I want to use that as a handrail. Plus it adds some length to the stairs. 

For the posts, I decided to use 16" x 16" posts, so 2 bricks square on each side. I do have to fill in the center with concrete and rebar to give enough support for the 6x6 roof posts. I'm going to do tapered craftsman-style tops to support the rim, then build a gable roof. Takes a lot of concrete before I get to start roofing, though.

and a bunch of digging.

Dry stack of the post leading out to the first knee wall

Starting to dig

Outline for the stairs and knee walls

detail of the right side

starting to pour the brick shelf

Now with more wife supervision

Working in shorts and a t-shirt on 12/7/18

then we got a ton of snow on 12/8 - that's my brick & sailboat

First course going down

Got the rest of the brick shelf poured - this is the right post

Finished getting down the first course of brick for the left post, both knee walls, and the first stair

So now I've got my brickwork completely outlined, dug out, dry fit, and the brick shelf is totally poured. The stairs are going to take longer than anything else, every single part of each step has to dry overnight before I can pour the next part. So I'm trying to focus first on the knee walls to frame out the stairs, then build the next part of the stairs every day. Then I'll build up the posts & fill in the fields of the veneer last.

This is going to take a while.