Like a brick wall

Bricklaying is a slow process. I mean it takes forever to get off of the ground, well actually, it takes forever to get the brickline above ground. It's hard on my old man lower back, bending over to lay brick below the soil line like that.

Getting above ground

Knee walls are taller than the stairs

Like I outlined in the last post, there is a column before a short spacer on the front, leading into a knee wall. The stairs are 8' wide, then the other knee wall has the column behind it. Making the stairs is a long process, I start with a course of brick laid horizontally, then backfill with concrete after that's dried. That takes 12 bricks and 7 bags of concrete. Then add a row of bricks on edge, and backfill that with enough concrete to display the rest of the step and setup the next step. That usually takes 31 bricks and 7 more bags of concrete. it's a little more than one bag of mortar to get all of that brick to stay still too. Since we only paid 25 cents per brick, $4.50 per bag of concrete, and $5.50 per bag of mortar, the cost of each step is around $60. And we need 5 steps.

The knee walls need to stay higher than the steps by at least one course. Eventually, I figured out that I needed to finish the knee walls before getting too high on the steps. Turns out, when you mortar up a brick wall every course drips mortar onto whatever is below it. I learned the hard way how much work it is to clean up that dropped mortar. Don't do it.

Work forces us to use all of our annual PTO before the end of the year so everyone gets a large vacation around the holidays. I got 11 days out of the office, and spent 4 of those days in SC enjoying the Christmas holiday with my family. The rest of the time, I was trying to lay brick. Pictures are taken at the end of the day, could be low light.

Day 1: 

Got some height on the front 2 columns and both knee walls. First step of edge bricks are in

Check out all of that backfill rubble for the steps

 

 

Bucket added for height reference

Day 2: 

getting some height on those knee walls

ran out of mortar on the right side

Starting to look like an actual stairwell!

The first two days took 11 bags of concrete and 8 bags of mortar to get it this far.

Backfilled the first step, and you can see I got the vertical rebar in the posts

Got the family to put our right handprints in the wet concrete for the bottom step

Made some progress on the left side wall too

Day 3 started with a rain delay and ended early, it was Christmas Eve after all. Only 2 bags of mortar, but I did also cut some scrap luan underlayment that I had laying around to act as a catch for the concrete caps for the knee walls. I didn't need to fill in the whole thing with concrete like I do the posts.

The posts have to be filled in completely and reinforced with rebar because they have to bear the entire weight of the roof. They will get the same caps I'm pouring for the knee walls.

Right knee wall is at finished height, 1 brick above that luan catcher. The left? I ran out of mortar

Got the first course of the 2nd step laid down

Day 4: After returning from SC I got to work again on 12/29. Got 7 bags of concrete and 4 bags of mortar down.

Poured the backfill behind step 2

Laid down the left knee wall, first few rows of the upper knee wall, and the first time the concrete block has been covered

Post is getting taller too, and made progress on the left wall

This time I was able to set the edge bricks for the 2nd step on the same day as pouring the backfill. Warm day!

you can see the void behind the edge bricks

Got the left column up to floor height too!

This was a big day! Every step in building those stairs requires waiting overnight for it to cure before moving on to the next step. This is the first time it was warm enough for the backfill behind the bottom course to dry enough for me to set the edge bricks on top without having to wait overnight.

Day 5 (12/30/18): 9 bags of concrete. Built the forms and poured the caps for the bottom 2 knee walls, backfill for the 2nd step. Got to watch some college football too.

Forms are made and poured

Drew a heart in the wet concrete

Detail of the forms

To make the forms, I cut 2x4's to go around the cured brick at the same height as the brick. Then I cut 1x6 to wrap around the 2x4 and screwed them flush with the bottom of the 2x4. Turns out, the cheapest 1x6 I could find was the pressure treated deck board. You certainly don't have to use PT decking for this, it was just the cheapest thing I could find. The height difference between the 2x4 and the 5/4 x 6 boards creates the thickness of the cap. Be sure the form is level and fill it to the top.

Day 6 was mostly rained out, but I did get one bag of mortar down and pulled the forms off of those caps.

Caps done, posts are above the floor

And that's all of the work I got done in 2018! It was a really fun year, I got to work on a ton of projects. This porch is probably the biggest impact project yet, and I'm already looking forward to having all of this brick down.