DrMatt
MelNRob
I'm not building a bentley but i see that you are going to use the Urban One Latte brick. We chose that too for our PD home so interested to see how it will look as i don't think there has been many homes in the PD range using that brick.
Guess i'll have to stalk ur thread to see how it looks! haha!
Guess i'll have to stalk ur thread to see how it looks! haha!
Hi Mel,
The good news is that the bricks look great. Better than the pictures actually - it was getting dark when I got out there today and I had to use flash which has washed out the colour a bit. Hopefully I'll get some better pictures in natural light over the weekend.
The bricks are all even, very few chips even around the plumbing, and the mortar levels are consistent and the blending is perfect. The bricklayer seems to be doing a pretty good job.
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The bad news is that on closer inspection some of the bricks have some fairly significant surface cracks in them, sometimes spanning the whole height of the brick. I was initially very concerned that this was the bricks crumbling or collapsing, but picked up a few bricks from the pallet and can see that it's actually fine cracking caused probably when the bricks were dried. It doesn't look great but probably nothing to be structurally concerned about.
You probably can't see the cracks in the small image below so click this link for a bigger zoom in.
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The bricks themselves are standard natural bricks which have been surface coated in the latte colour on 3 sides. This means that when they chip the natural orange colour underneath will be exposed and the chips will show up as very obvious. Fortunately the layer seems to be doing a good job of not chipping the bricks, despite the raked mortar, and also not laying any of the bricks chipped on the pallet. Nevertheless I'm starting to think that these are not very good bricks and wondering if I will regret not choosing to upgrade to a more expensive brick in years to come.
Probably not the news you wanted to hear, and to be fair it's a fairly minor issue - likely purely cosmetic and only noticible (both the cracks and potential chips) when you look up close, but I figured I'd let you know.
The brickie looks to be doing a great job, we had raked also and our SS said today it 's probably the hardest style to get right and you have to be good at it, to get the perfect finish. We are very happy with ours. Are there many fine cracks in the bricks Matt? Were the bricks an upgrade? Our porch and peirs got their undercoat today and we had our Blind, curtain maker out also, rapt in the price we were given, he has been in the business for 27yrs, owned a well known window covering factory and shop. Can't beat the price or the quality.