Completion of the Brick Wall!

Finally another one of our projects has a nice big red X next to it.
Not really, we don't really have a master list with X's, but that would be really cool! Although my fireman would probably kill me....

I got to take lots of fun photos cause I was laid up on the couch at home recovering *read drugged up* while another fireman friend of my fireman who owns a side business doing something with brick walls, I'm not really sure. A lot of fireman have side businesses/jobs because of their schedule and days off. Also on account of their overall brawniness. So, we win all over the place cause whatever job we're doing someone has a specialty tool or has a business or has experience to come help with it.



Anyway, this one friend does brick work and has this specialty tool that has a hopper and you put your mortar in it and squeeze a trigger and the mortar comes out of a nozzle and you pipe it in. Sometimes they use like a pastry bag, but this tool is way cooler. Then, once you pipe in the lines, you go back with a tucking tool and smooth the lines all in.

This is how the rest of the world does it. It's called tuck pointing.

With this tool.

Here's our wall all ready to go, with everything moved away from it. They brought in boards to stand on and that table has a big heaping pile of mortar on it. They poured it out and it kind of sludged out and stopped. Weird. I was sure it was going to go all over the floor.

So, then the fun starts.

Whirrrrrrrr. That's all you could hear, from the tool spitting out the mortar.
Whirrrrr.

Whirrrrrrrrr. Down, row after row after row.

Now that there's a chunk done, he uses the tucking tool to smooth the edges in up and down and make all the lines perfect.

I just drank some coffee from my vantage point on the couch. Ahh, that's the life.

Whirrrrrrr, right side.

Then, he got my fireman to continue the rows down, as he started smoothing out the right side.

I know, you guys are riveted.

It's fun sitting on the couch watching men work.

We're getting soooo much done!

Then, we had to wait a bit for him to come back and finish. He finished it yesterday, while I was at work. So, no in-process pictures.
I'm sure you're devastated.
Here's the finished wall. The first 3/4 of it is finished and dried and the last bit is still wet. I LOVE it!!

And the backside of the wall. Still wet. You can see how the bricks absorb the moisture from the mortar. It's kind of neat. Then, once it's all dried it looks normal again.

But AWESOME!

We need to install the new pushbotton light switch back here as well...wiring work. And the other switch is a cool old metal switch for our whole house fan. I got a metal plate for that one as well, with just a center hole, the fireman is going to drill it out to fit.

We got the plates on the switches by the front door. Aren't they cool? The first switch is for the living room lights/fan, then second switch is to the outside lights, right by the door. Press the top one to turn on, the bottom to turn off. Verra cool.

Bad pic, but this is from my couch seat of the living room hallway lightswitch. The beam is on the right. You can also see the pretty buttery/cream color we painted the hallway.

This is going to our bedroom. The same buttery cream continues around the hallway and to our room.

I like it against the brick.

The fireman took these closeup shots for you to see that it's real, worn brick. I think it's Chicago brick, taken from an old warehouse, somewhere. Since we got old, real brick, and the fireman cut just the faces off of each side, we got it at half price, cause we only had to buy half the bricks we would need for the walls and got 2 faces per brick. Plus, it wasn't as heavy as a real brick wall and we didn't have to put up support for the wall. And with the beam at the end of the wall, it really looks real, with depth to it. I like the texture and the change of color.

And there you have it. A fake brick wall, that looks really real. And was much cheaper than the really expensive ready to go stuff and better than the really fake looking z-bricks.

Please excuse my poor in-need-of-repair piano. The fireman is going to fix the side and refinish the seat, as well!

And there you have it! Another project, X'd off!