Brick and Stone
Part of designing the front elevation of your home is making
your selection of brick, mortar stone, stucco, and wood. Our
home uses no wood paneling, only brick, stone and stucco. We
made this choice to lessen the maintenance required.
The easiest way to make these choices is to drive around town
and fine some combinations that you like on existing homes.
Take along a Polaroid camera and snap some shots of the front
elevations that you like. Make sure you write the address on
the photo so that you can find it again. The photos rarely do
the home justice.
Did you know that mortar can make up 20% of the brick wall's
surface? That is why it is important to choose a brick color
and a mortar color.
For our home, we used a Austin Stone and a reddish-brown brick
with a sandy-colored mortar. We had the mason slop extra mortar
on the brick to give it a messy look. We didn't worry a great
deal about getting the color of the brick exactly right since
we were going to be covering so much of it with mortar. We also
used large sections of stone and brick to give the wall a look
of a bombed out building that was patched back together with
available materials.
In some locations where the stone and brick touch, we covered
the brick with so much mortar that it is hard to tell whether
you are looking at brick or stone.
Many homes in the neighborhood used brick and stone combinations,
but they might have a 15' x 15' section of brick with a little
round 2' x 2' section of stone in the middle. Frankly, it looked
rather contrived. Instead, we might have a 15' x 15' section
of brick/stone with a 6' x 2' or 4' x 8' section of stone/brick
on one corner.
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