DIY (Mostly Salvaged) Brick Porch by Picardy Project

landscaping, brick, repurposing, diy

DIY (Mostly Salvaged) Brick Porch

By Picardy Project on Aug 06, 2012

Friday morning I went back to Kelly-Moore and got our paint tinted. I had wanted to go darker than they could, but because the original color had a medium base, they couldn't go too dark without the color getting washed out and looking really muddy

Considering we started with such a light color, I think they did a really good job. And they were really nice. So I've got no complaints.

I drove home and got the first coat on pretty quick

It was going on a medium gray, but as it dried the blue really came out

Here it is this morning

If I could do it all over (and buy another gallon) I'd still go even darker, but I like it a lot better this second time around, so I'm satisfied enough to leave it.

And if you were really observant in the above pic you might have noticed a little something something in the bottom right.....

BRICKS! While I was away at work all weekend Chris worked on laying the bricks on the porch, hooray! A few weeks ago I trucked up to my parent's house to retrieve 170 bricks from them from when we ripped out their fireplace over 2 years ago

They had been saving all of them with the intention of probably using them for a project, but after 2 years they still didn't really have a use for them so I asked ever so kindly and batted my eyelashes and they let me snag them. They have been sitting on the side of our house now for several weeks ready to be cleaned up

One of the perks of working all day on the weekends when Chris is working on the house is I always get excited to come home and see the amazing progress he has made. Saturday was no different

Doesn't that look awesome!? And the crazy thing is that at that point there were only 20-30 more bricks leftover from my parents! We hadn't really done an accurate calculation of how many bricks we'd need to cover the whole porch because when you have several stacks of bricks and see how many 170 looks like, you totally figure that'll be enough. Wrong answer. It was only about 2/3rds of how many we needed in total.

Sunday rolled around and while I left for work Chris spent the morning calling around to see if any landscape place was open. I didn't have my hopes up that he'd find a place because most specialty places (ie, not HD or Lowe's) aren't usually open on Sundays. And we had to go to a specialty place because these bricks were a bit larger than normal. But sure enough I got a text from him around 11 saying he was on his way to get some, hooray! He spent $100 and got 103. He only bought 100, but as the guy was counting them out he said he'd give him 3 extra. Which was great because we used every single one.

And again, I came home from work and saw this magnificence

And Chris plugging away on finishing the last bit in one of the nooks

And around the downspout

And when it was all done we got to marvel at its awesomeness

That is a pretty sight to see walking up to the house if I do say so myself

We're planning to do a small stucco patch just below the bricks and then paint it the same color of the house to blend it in

And now we don't have to worry about anyone tripping

There are gaps in the bricks, and although it's not a big deal, we'll put in some polymeric sand leftover from the patio to give it a more seamless look

But how awesome is that view to the front door???

Pretty damn fantastic if you ask me :)