BRICK BEGINS

This is just a start, but I can tell already that it's going to be a long, slow process, so I won't wait for completion. We fell in love with a brick when we were living in Asheville, and after literally years of asking around, finally found the company that makes it, almost by accident.  Unfortunately, we also found out that they're in Nebraska, and shipping brick is not cheap.  It's a lustrous dark gray, with a little bit of brown and even purple and blue, depending on the light.  It's a little bit shiny, as if it were glazed, but it's certainly not.  It's just a special clay from that region that takes on a slight sheen when it's fired.  In the end, we couldn't find anything locally that came close, so we ordered two truckloads of Endicott brick and it arrived right around Christmas.  This is absolutely the most beautiful brick I've ever seen, so Endicott - if you're listening - send me a kickback.

We began with the vertical brick, on the exterior foundation walls.  We used three different sizes: utility, norman and modular, and a number of different shapes within each size.  Most of the exterior work was done in utility size brick, which is 4x4x12 nominal.

This is the stair down to the spillway terrace, outside the library.  The landing negotiates the changing angle of the retaining wall on the left.

 

Jerry Bradshaw, our master mason, laying out the radiant heating lines in our exterior bench - more about this later...

A finished wall.  It's hard to appreciate the iridescent sheen of the Endicott brick in a photo, especially when it still has mortar residue all over, but this brick is incredible.  I'm jealous of any architect who lives in Nebraska - I would be using this product on every job I drew.

Another bench wall.

And another view of our first really finished brick wall.

Maybe here you can see a little of the reflective sheen of the brick.  Okay, maybe I'm a detail geek, but I love this brick.