At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

The brickwork looks good Obed. I have tried laying some brick and found it is not at all as easy as it looks while watching a mason. Much more difficult than concrete block IMO.

I laid bricks for 1 1/2 steps underneath the sliding glass door of the first house we owned. It was a small job but took me forever. I would put mud on the sides of the brick but the mud would fall off before I could get the brick in place. It wasn't a problem with the mud; the mud was mixed properly. While I was working, a sub-contractor we had hired to do some drywall work saw me trying to lay the brick. He said he had done some brick work and asked if he could try a few. I said sure. So he laid 10 bricks in the amount of time it took me to lay one and his work looked better than mine. I finished the steps but decided then that I would hire out any other brick work I needed.

What sort of brick ties are used these days?

They appear to be the same stuff I've seen in use for many years. They are silver colored corrugated metal (maybe galvanized metal?).

 

[Obed]

Looking very nice! I'm really impressed how the red brick stands out so nicely in the middle of the woods.

Thanks. I'm pretty happy so far with the brick work. The brick mason seems very accommodating. My wife has been "supervising" the brick work pretty closely. She's been making sure that the flashing, weep holes, neatness of the brick work, etc. is acceptable. She and the brick mason have had lots of discussions about we wanted certain things done. The brick mason has initiated several of these discussions and we appreciate that.

We are also very pleased with the type of brick and the mortor color that we chose. You never really know how it will look until you see it on the house. When we were brick shopping, we pretty much knew we wanted the red brick (not bright red) with black speckled in. I thought I wanted the gray colored mortor based on looking at the samples in the brick store. However, the brick store told us about some buildings we could view that had our brick on them; some of the buildings had gray colored mortor and some had buff colored mortor. When we compared the two mortor colors on completed buildings, we found we liked the buff mortor much better than the gray mortor. We were also surprised at how different the brick looks just by changing the mortor color. We were unable to see the striking differences just by looking at the display samples in the brick store.

Obed

 

[TBDonnelly]

A comment regarding exterior coverings (brick, vinyl, stucco, etc.) and the tax assessor. In Michigan, exterior covering are rated on a sliding schedule. The better, longer lasting materials are assigned a higher tax rate. So, the better materials not only cost more initially but, year after year cost more through the assessed property taxes. My hunch is this practice varies widely from state to state.

Don

 

[scoutcub]

A comment regarding exterior coverings (brick, vinyl, stucco, etc.) and the tax assessor. In Michigan, exterior covering are rated on a sliding schedule. The better, longer lasting materials are assigned a higher tax rate. So, the better materials not only cost more initially but, year after year cost more through the assessed property taxes. My hunch is this practice varies widely from state to state.

Don

So that's why my taxes were so high in MI?? The house I just left (in MI) was the highest property taxes I've ever paid in my life, and the house was partially bricked. I'm curious about Ohio as I'll be building here in a few more years.
Still, it's hard to beat brick or stone for maintenance free longevity.....

 

[Obed]

A comment regarding exterior coverings (brick, vinyl, stucco, etc.) and the tax assessor. In Michigan, exterior covering are rated on a sliding schedule. The better, longer lasting materials are assigned a higher tax rate. So, the better materials not only cost more initially but, year after year cost more through the assessed property taxes. My hunch is this practice varies widely from state to state.

Don

That's also the case here unfortunately. So I guess we could all just live in campers to save on taxes. Wait, I already tried that!
Obed

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Congrats on the leniency afforded to living in the camper.

Things are looking good. Still enjoy lurking here.

I'm still tickled that you all are going to be moving from an old camper to the Taj Mahal.

 

[Obed]

The brick on the front of the garage got finished yesterday. Overall, I like their work. They seem to be doing a good job putting the brick on the house, putting flashing where it belongs, etc.

However, we have to watch them regarding the ancillary aspects of the job. We've had issues with their using "our stuff". For example, they took one of our shovels out of the garage and were using it to shovel sand. While that by itself wouldn't bother me, I'm sure the shovel would end up be used for mortar and get ruined. And it would probably end up leaving with their tools. And that's not the only tool of ours they've used. And once they use something, it never makes its way back to where they found it. The workers left about 4 PM yesterday. Unfortunately, with 80% chance of rain in the forcast, they didn't cover anything and didn't put straw down in front of the garage to protect the brick from red clay mud splattering on it. So my wife spent about an hour picking up after them.

My wife and I moved the mortar mixer this morning. They had it right beside the sand pile and mortar runoff was running downhill into the sand. So we moved the mixer a few feet away so the mortar runoff would run AWAY from the sand, not toward it. This morning I needed our spool of nylon string. I had left the spool of string at the house end of the conduit with the spool still attached to the string inside our phone cable conduit. Somebody had cut the string and taken the spool of string. So I wrapped the end of the string around the conduit and taped it down so it wouldn't end up falling in the conduit. While I don't know for sure that the brickies took the spool, string is something they I could see them having a use for. Here's our aluminum step ladder they had obviously used.

Thanks for putting up with my rant. I'm not really unhappy. I'd rather deal with these "small" things than have to face unsatisfactory brick work. These are just some of the things we deal with. I suppose it comes with the territory.

 

[Obed]

Yesterday after work, I added a temporary extension to the drain tile pipe by this retaining wall to make room for the brick work. I'll eventually lay a permanent drain pipe prior to the final grading.

After I finished the pipe and my wife finished prepping the brick for the forecasted rain, we picked some wild blackberries as the sun went down. I might even get a cobbler out of the deal!

 

[dave1949]

Nice looking blackberries. Ours are still green and could use some rain to get really nice.

Your brick mason probably hires a tender to mix mortar, schlepp bricks, keep the hod full, rod mortar joints, etc. It's hard and endless work and usually doesn't attract those with an inquiring mind. I think you should just tell the mason to be sure his crew uses their own tools.
Dave.

 

[scoutcub]

However, we have to watch them regarding the ancillary aspects of the job.

.

When I lived in MI in a subdivision, a couple bought the lot across from us and built a house. The wife was a realtor and quite familiar with the building trades. They acted as their own GC and contracted out the subs. I heard story after story about how they would "catch" the subcontractors with issues and force them to correct it. The couple was retired, so could stay on the job site every day.
The icing on the cake was when the roofers were working on the front of the house, the couple pulled out they're lawn chairs, with big straw hats and drinks, and sat facing the workers watching every move........wow! I felt bad for the workers, but....