In homebuilding, picking out the right materials can be a little tricky.

    I talked yesterday about the value of painting out larger samples of your wall and trim paint selections to verify that the colors were right. The same principles applies to the other materials you plan to use. Don’t pick bricks from a photo or even from a brick sample card with several thin bricks on it. Without mortar, the bricks will look different than they will on your house. Stone is even tougher. I can’t imagine being confident in a stone selection from a handful of loose stones. Stones come in a very wide range of colors, textures, and sizes. And there is no good way to describe stone in words. Photos of other walls help, but you need to be sure your builder can reproduce the wall you want. (more…)

    Here is the answer to yesterday’s Dream House Fumble question. I asked if you saw what was wrong with the brickwork. Here’s the photo, again, just to refresh your memory.

Dream House Fumble #3

    Does the brick look “glued on” to you? It does to me. (more…)

    I love well done Brick Masonry.

    “God is in the details.” So said Gustave Flaubert and later, and arguably more famously, said architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Regardless of the origin of the famous phrase, it is undeniably true.

    A good house, or any other structure for that matter, must have good “bones.” The overall composition, the proportions, and the massing must be right or no amount of detail can save it. I often joke with my clients that if their house looks good in Tyvek, when the whole thing is wrapped in white sheets of house wrap, it will look even better when it’s finished. That’s because the details bring the entire design to life. (more…)

    Here’s a photo from famous Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, California. This was the site of this year’s U.S. Open golf championship, famously won by Tiger Woods who played on an injured knee. Not only did he have ligament damage in his left knee, Woods had stress fractures he had not mentioned. Still he played on and eventually won the biggest tournament of the year on a course that meant so much to him.

    His knee wasn’t the only thing that was out of whack at Torrey Pines. Check out the brickwork on the masonry posts around the first tee. It reminds me of Tiger’s pained follow through on some of his shots! (more…)

Here’s a discussion that came up today on one of my projects. We were making a brick selection for the exterior of the house. The brick companies readily provide sample boards that have thin pieces of actual bricks, not just photos, for you to see. That’s very helpful, but the problem is that the cardboard sample boards do not have any mortar between the bricks. If there are sample boards with “mortar,” they use a synthetic mortar substitute because real mortar would break out on a board like this. It may or may not be the color of the mortar you will be using. Either way, the true, final color that your brick wall will produce is not readily apparent. (more…)