Accent any part of your house with brick
Step by step instructions for the DIY homeowner on how to complete a brick wall installation.
You don’t have to settle for ugly stucco around your house, anymore. Whether you wish to complete your own brick wall installation, or if you have a brick layer who is doing it for you, it’s always good to educate yourself about the process.
In the following article, I am going to outline the steps it took to veneer a public building in Plantation Fl. This article is about a brick wall installation with full Chicago bricks. If you wish to learn about how to install thin brick veneers click here.
How to Build Your Own Brick Wall From Full Bricks.
Build a brick wall that will last for decades and save you hundreds
The length of the wall in our example is 10 ft. Each brick is around 8″ plus the 3/8th or a half of an inch joint that gives us around 8.5″ per brick. 10 ft is 120 inches and dividing the 120 inches with 8 ½ we get 14.1 bricks in one course. Lets round this one up to 15. So all together we have 20 courses and each course holds 15 bricks that gives us a total of 300 bricks for the whole wall.
It is always a good idea to order a few more bricks than you need for cuts and breakage. So to complete our brick wall you would need to order around 320 bricks. As an average, for the installation of 120 bricks you will need about 9 bags 60lbs of mortar.
The first step in building your veneer wall is to establish the corners. After outlining the first course you have to build a small lead on each sides of the wall in order for you to pull a string line. This will establish the height of each course and keep a straight wall as you go along building your wall.
The height or thickness of the mortar joints are gong to be determined by the total height of the wall. If you need to meet a certain elevation with your wall I would advise you to measure out each course with the thickness of the joints on the corners.
Simply mark your outline on the wall you wish to veneer. You don’t want to arrive with a half course lower or higher on the top of the wall. The top of the last brick has to be exactly the desired height. After building your leads you have to pull a line and put it to the top corner of the bricks on each side of your lead. And build your wall one course at a time.
If you veneer your bricks around any masonry wall it is always a good idea to tie some of the courses to the wall. As the example shown in the pictures. This will ensure that the brick wall will be properly adhered or tied to the CMU wall behind it. If you use a straight edge brick you will have to rake the joints to about a half an inch in depth.
Lets start installing the bricks.
There is no need to use the 6 ft level and plumb each curse. You just simply have to line up the top corner of your bricks to the string and it will provide you with an accurate guideline for each and every curse.
Quick tip! Occasionally step back a few feet from the brick column and check on the outcome. See if your joints are equally sized and if the bricks are perfectly level on each courses.
It is important to keep the wall and the bricks free from mortar.
It will save you a lot of cleaning time and the result will be a much more professional one.
Second note: Although we installed a precast stone cap and sealed the wall against water damage, we were also required to install weep-holes on every two feet on the bottom of the brick wall. This allowed trapped water to escape from behind the brick wall.
As you go along with the installation of the bricks you have to do some minor touch ups, such us filling up or tuck-pointing the joints with mortar. ( The same mortar you have used for laying the bricks but perhaps in a little thicker consistency.) Don’t let the mortar get too dry. Try to do the tooling as you go up, after finishing every 4-5 courses.
The most commonly used joints are either concaved or raked out ( Square recessed ) joints. If you finished tooling the brick joints you have to brush it with a light whisk brush to smooth-out the surface of the mortar.
And that’s all. You can complement this brick veneer with a cut brick or a precast stone cap. With a little effort and attention to details you can complete this brick veneer project like a breeze. And the completed brick wall will be for the admiration of your neighbors and the attention and praise from your guests for many years to come. If you wish to learn about how to install thin sliced Chicago bricks click here.