Old foreman called my brickwork 'too perfect' - here's what I changed

He told me my joints looked like a machine did them and that's a BAD thing for character on a historic restoration job in Philly. I started using a tighter strike and letting the mortar have some imperfection - who else has had to unlearn being too clean?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim.jake1mo ago

The trick is learning that old brickwork was never perfect in the first place. Real historic mortar has little variations from mixing by hand and different sand batches. I started using a slightly different mix on each batch and wiping the joints at uneven times so they dry differently.

the_thea1mo ago

Dead on @kim.jake. I do the same thing with lime putty and sand from the same creek bed but different spots, each batch comes out a bit off and the wall just looks right.

spencer_park261mo agoMost Upvoted

oh totally, yeah that's the thing that took me way too long to figure out. i used to obsess over getting every batch exactly the same and it just drove me crazy. now i kinda lean into the variations, like grabbing sand from different spots in the same wash and mixing it with different amounts of lime putty. sometimes i'll even leave some of the aggregate a little chunkier just to see how it looks. the whole wall ends up having this natural flow that you just can't get with a perfect consistent mix. i mean, that's what makes old work feel alive right, all those little mismatches that somehow work together.