BBQ finished

A the BBQ is now complete with the addition of a nice green granite counter-top. :-)

BBQ brickwork done and cleaned.

Now all that's left is a countertop. :-)

BBQ area - almost complete

Worked for the last few days finishing up the backyard BBQ area. It's only taken my ~4 years! The grill and the doors still have their protective coatings on them. They are actually stainless steel. The firepit area is will be fill with crushed glass and a ring of fire will rise out of it.

Glazed fountain spouts

My friends John and Chris Gray at Clayworks glazed and fired the spouts I built last week. They look very nice. Next step is to mortar them in to place -- which is going to be a pain because it is now 103 degrees outside!

Fountain spouts

Today I sculpted the spouts for the fountain on my back porch. The white boards under each are scaffolds supporting them until the dry at which time I will remove, glaze, and fire them. The firing should cause them to shrink so then I will be able to mortar them back into position.

Utility yard steps

This afternoon I built three steps along the utility yard that will be back-filled with pea-gravel forming a series of stepped terraces using the bricks my neighbors gave me.

Plants

I attached my custom tiles to the front of the planter my friend Scott Thurmon came over with dirt and plants so the front planter is now complete (except that the irrigation still needs to be connected). In a year or so the red yucca in the middle should grow up to be more proportional to the mass of the planter.

Acid washing

Today I acid washed the back wall. What a difference the acid makes. Compare to the earlier pictures. I started playing with tiles on the front steps. I haven't made my final decision on that yet. Some of my friends hate it and others love it. Amusingly, so far it seems to break down roughly between those who have lived/traveled in Spain or Latin America and those who haven't.

Finished back wall masonry

I finished the last of the back wall masonry this morning. It's been mocking me for 2 weeks so nice to have it done. Acid washing is next.

End cap masonry

I spent the week programming things which do not yet work and thus have nothing graphically interesting to post. Here's progress on the end-cap of my rear-patio instead.

Completed brick seat wall

Weekends for 2 month and finally finished today (less acid washing). The end cap came out a little crooked as it was very difficult to get the unsupported bricks to stay vertical. I ended up propping chairs against them to hold them while setting. If I were to do it again, I would build an interior support and let it harden for a week and the affix the out bricks to that support as I did along the other walls.

Usual weekend masonry

Progress on the back wall. I've finished the back wall minus the end cap. In these pictures you can see the "sketch" of the end cap where a planter will go and filling-in of the CMU block foundation that will be the back of the BBQ / fire pit. That's ~400 lbs of concrete I moved around this weekend and it barely looks different!

Back wall

Masonry is slow, tedious, heavy, dirty, at times back-breaking. All the pleasure is delayed -- a sense of accomplishment, an "I built that" satisfaction when you're done. I don't think I could have done such a slow and delayed-gratification task when I was young; what changes as we age that permits the patentice for such projects?

Some of the appeal of brickwork is the giant lego-ness of it. Or more to the point, old-school legos when there were only a few generic bricks -- before the marketing department at lego corrupted them into themed monstrosities with an over-reliance on custom single-use pieces. Brickwork tickles a nerdy engineering need for an elegant basis set from which solutions are cleanly constructed. But it lacks the playful impermanence of legos -- while I'm laying them I often think about the fact that these bricks will likely be the most long-lived thing I will make in my life. I wouldn't be surprised if 300 years from now my house has been torn down but the brickwork remains. Building things which are unobtrusive, durable, beautiful, and utilitarian is an almost guaranteed way to make sure they are maintained into the future.

Back seat wall progress

Today I made good progress on the back seat wall on a perfect 60 degree day. It isn't doesn't require any creative thought as the pattern is regular over the whole length so it's an almost meditative task that requires nearly zero brain power.

Acid washing and starting of back wall

This morning I made the first acid wash of the planter. The acid is pretty nasty to work with. I'm probably overly-paranoid, but I get dressed in a full acid apron, face shield, and gloves. The acid wash makes it look so much better, so despite what a pain it is, it's really quite fun to see the final product emerge. It usually takes two passes to get it really clean with a power wash after each acid application. Unfortunately I don't have a power washer at the moment so I'm just going to leave it like this for a while until my room mate Aaron brings his from Houston.


Meanwhile, I also finished up the brick apron adjacent to the driveway which is where I park garbage cans on garbage days, a small detail but worth it.



Then I started on the back seat wall. First I stacked up dry bricks to work out the pattern and then starting on the first few courses until I ran out of mortar for the day. That small section is about 2 hours of work once you include mixing, cleanup, etc.

Planter brickwork completed

I finished the brickwork on the planter this morning. All that's left is acid washing, filling with dirt, and planting. I think it took me something on the order of 40-60 hours over about 3-4 months -- but that's a guess, I don't keep track.

Planter masonry

I've started on the planter masonry in the front of my house. I want a roughly exponential spiral that appears to have somehow grown naturally in place. I also want it to afford a comfortable conversation with the front steps. Unfortunately I didn't realize how unlevel this part of the sidewalk foundation was until after I started laying bricks. I had wanted it a little out-of-level to promote drainage but it is a lot more noticeable that I thought it would be -- as you walk up from the neighboring house you're eye compares the lines of the planter to the front porch brickwork and it is very clear that they are out of sync. So I've change the design so that top part of the planter is deliberately crooked to exaggerate the effect in a "if you can't beat it, embrace it" design. Inevitably this limitation pushed me to a new place I wouldn't have gone and I like the new design better in some ways.

This is something that I really like about masonry -- you are forced to commit. In many ways, masonry is the exact opposite of software engineering. Software has a neverworld feeling: it is light, squishy, virtual, and totally forgiving -- if you screw up you just revert the version control. Masonry is heavy, real, and completely unforgiving -- when you screw up you either live with it or get out a sledge hammer. (One step I didn't like took me over a week of pounding with a hammer and chisel to remove -- about twice as long as it took me to build it in the first place.) Software's undo button permits a kind of intellectual laziness where anything that isn't exactly how you imagine is cast as merely a "bug" awaiting correction. With masonry you are forced into finding ways to convert mistakes into features. It is challenging but creatively healthy. I find myself everyday sitting on my porch for a few minutes staring at this pile of bricks and moving them around trying to decide what happens next. Then I lay the next course and think again.