One thing I did not mention in the video is that I built this on a concrete slab on grade. If you plan to do this on a floor that is elevated (like on second floor or above a crawl space or basement), take into consideration the weight of the brick. You may need to add some structural support to the floor below or it may sag. Also make sure to do the mechanical fastening of the bricks to the wall. Don't just rely on the adhesive for that. Go to 12.06 in the video and you can see how I tied it back to the wall. Let me know how it turns out!
This looks amazing. I've been wishing I had a brick wall to use as a video background for a long time - now I know how to build it. Just need to actually own a home now :P
I'm so glad you put in those screws into the studs. The painted drywall is not load bearing, so it could rip off any time. I did mine by screwing in cement board over the drywall, the screws went into the studs also. The cement board is load bearing and will hold the weight of the brick without having to stack them, just stick them on.
Yes I get a lot of comments from people that don't watch that far into the video and tell me the wall is going to fall down. I should have said something about the mechanical attachment earlier in the video.
Hahaha you and my dad would be best friends. In all seriousness though, I think I just found a cool project for him and I to do together. Thanks Lee. 10/10 Video
Awesome job Lee, it looks many times better than the faux wall finishes that are so common. And I'm sure knowing that it's real brick, you enjoy the result a lot more. Truly inspiring.
Thanks. I completely agree but one thing to keep in mind is the kind of return are you going to REALISTICALLY see from what ever kind of home improvement you are considering. In my case, I'm in a really good neighborhood where it would be really difficult to over-improve your property. If I were in a neighborhood where the property values are not so good, or if it was a rental house (either one that I owned or was renting from someone else), I would definitely consider doing a faux finish in lieu of all this work.
you are a good carpenter. I did this kind of work with my father for 10 years and I loved it. We did everything u could think of as far as custom building.
my former boss has brick in his kitchen, some comes up to the chair rail trim and some is the whole wall. it looks really good too. he cut 4 slivers from 1 brick and made tiles. it took him a month to do everything lol.
Thanks! I should have emphasized the screw attachments a little more in the video because a lot of people miss it. Many commenters have warned me that the tile adhesive alone is not going to keep all those bricks attached to the structure, and I have to tell them to go watch the video again, and to pay attention this time LOL!
I achieved a similar effect by simply knocking the plaster off my wall, then again I live in the UK where brick built houses are the norm and form part of the structural integrity of the house. Nice job BTW
Dayum, that's a lot of work, but it looks like a lot of fun and seems quite fulfilling when you finished! Fantastic work; it's great to be self-sufficient.
I had to look up what brick slips are, and it looks like a brand of thin brick. Which I agree is way easier, but it would be impossible to get any of the depth or texture that I was able to get with this half brick wall. Hell, sticking up some brick looking wall paper would be even more efficient and safe, but it would not look nearly as good.
I really appreciate the video! I am unfortunately having to tear down a historic building from 1880s and salvaging as much of the old brick as possible. This will be HUGE in the new design to maximize the brick for the interior walls.
Are you suggesting that I should have cut 500 bricks in half, inside my garage, with the door down, just so my neighbors aren't bothered by the noise from the saw? Because I would have to be completely deranged to do something that LOL!
This looks simply amazing! And here I was thinking about using faux brick. ..... hmmmm I should be able to knock this out with your fantastic instructions. Thanks for the pointers.
I'm sorry, but I couldn't get past the intro monologue. It was a work of art, thank you! I loved the video, and I thought it was a really cool idea to cut your bricks in half to cut the cost, very smart!
First time I went to the US I noticed most of what was brick, aside from factories, was car ports and awning structures. But something about the whole affair struck me as strange, so I went and had a look and was surprised to find the H iron was actually the core of the wall, and all of the supporting structure, while the brick was free standing and not even bearing much beyond its own weight. A completely different example compared to the UK. However in the last few decades the UK has started building a lot more US style high-rises, which combine multiple materials with a brick clad that just sits on the front tied to the back wall. It looks okay for the first 3 months, and then it stains and ages badly as little effort is made to protect the brick as it serves no real function unlike in an actual brick built home. Anyway, a good effort at the wall. I would have run a lot more mortar out, then pointed up - but your roughness actually adds some of the charm, and I expect you were more concerned with the bond to the wall behind than speed.
I agree with what you are saying but I think the main reason you see brick being used as a veneer than an actual structural component is because brick has a lot of structural limitations - especially when it comes to structural tension loads. Masonry and concrete need to be reinforced with steel to handle tension loads and there isn't a really good way of doing that with brick without using some kind of structural element on one side of the wall to support the brick. And you are correct about the mortar. I definitely dug it out in spots and generally roughened it up so it looked old and authentic.
Started watching your video cause I like what you're doing to the man cave there, and I saw the beefy king shirt and that just totally made my day (orlando born & raised here). The genesis was icing on the cake. thanks!
Where I live brick is still mainly used for structural purposes and to be honest I prefer it because you don't get the hollow sound when knocking the wall
One thing you missed, wall anchor ties. You need to add as you go up every 4th or 6th course. Critical to attach your brick to the existing wall so it all becomes one.
That is correct and I installed screws into the wood stud that protrude 1" to 1-1/4" into the mortar joints at every fifth course. You can see what i did at 12.07 in the video.
I'm assuming this was a side project for yourself and you don't do it for a living. The ultimate WEEKEND WARRIOR! Great job man. My next project is making a contemporary carbon steel gate(s) with a patina using the existing cinder block walls so that how I came across your video. Amazing what we can do. You gave me some ideas to incorporate. Thanks man 👍🏻
You have the patience of a saint to attempt that...nice job, really like the look just don't fancy attempting that myself. I've got a chimney breast not even centered on main wall where I have a 65 inch which nearly covers the width, unless I strip back the plaster board down to the brick 😏😁
Lee, great video, I have done something very similar. I put my brick up using shims then came back once the thinset had set up and used a pastry bag and piped the moter between the brick and tooled it in. I wish I had pics to show I flipped that house and the wall I think is what made the sell.
I actually attempted that on this project. I was going to include the video I took doing it and talk about it, but edited it out because this video was getting too long. I tried it for about 5 or 6 courses of brick, but it was agonizingly slow. When you did it, I bet you used a thin brick. I my case with the half brick, it took a lot of mortar to fill in the joints and it was way slower for me.
Lee McNeil I actually used brick that I cut in half, I had some old Tumblr brick that I had no use for and it hit me to do a wall like that. I will admit the mortar I used was a bit more loose than I would have normally mixed. What took the most time was filling up the bag! The tip I had fit right up between the bricks and my wife came behind me to slightly tool it. Now I used a pastry bag like you would decorate a cake with and not a morter bag. It was smaller but the smaller tip worked in my favor. There was some extra time allowing the morter to dry so that I could go back and smooth it out.
Yeah when I tried it, I just stuffed the mortar into the joints with my hands and a pointing trowel. I have a mortar bag but I used it one time to fill in some joints in my pizza oven I built, and it kept clogging on me. I think the trick to using those effectively is to mix the mortar way looser than you normally would.
That intro.....LMFAO, I swear I watched it about 7 or 8 times before I even made it thru the video, then watched it again after finally watching the entire video lol, that was great. I'm thinking about doing the same thing to a wall in my house. Wanted thin brick but your idea sounds cheaper.
Thin brick would be just a little more expensive but a whole lot easier to install. And I don't know where I come up with these jokes, but I got a million of them.
Wow. That project looked like a nightmare waiting to happen, but you pulled it off! For nearly ten minutes I was waiting for the bricks to topple inward, then you demonstrated how to attach it to the studs within the mortor and I felt a lot less anxiety! The weight of that wall still scares me but it's nice looking!
Yeah a lot of people don't pay attention long enough to see what I did to tie the brick back to the wall behind it and tell me it's going to fall down. The brick is on a concrete slab on grade so the weight isn't a problem.
That's my son's car and I can tell you I was pretty hot about that. He had this wreck right when I started building the wall build. He went without a car for a good while but I still had to delay the brick to fix it. I drug him down to the junkyard with me and everything. Good times.
Thank you for prepping the TV cables and power. This is the only way I mount TV's. I am amazed at how many lazy people buy cool 65" TV's and then have the wires dangling down underneath it to their cable box and receptacle. It drives me insane. Do it right!
I can understand doing the wires on the outside of the wall if you have a plain drywall partition and you feel a little lazy, but no way was I going to do all this work to look at a bunch of wires in front of my brick wall. It is not that hard to do.
Thanks, but I am not a tradesman at all - not an electrician or a mason. I have a bachelor's degree in building construction from the University of Florida though. I spent my first 8 years out of school in the field doing building layout and working as a superintendent. I've spent the last 24 years as an estimator.
looks good but here's some little advice from a 21 year old that owns his own construction buisness. u can buy a grout bag for the motor to make it easy to fill in the joints between the bricks and honestly u didn't really have to wet the brick just to sit the others on top. but I mean whatever works best. eather than that it looks great man. pretty impressive. also u can use the back of the martial trial Wether it the big round one or a squared one to joint off the rest of the motor and you can also use muratic acid that you can buy at home depot to clean the bricks but just add water because then it will burn to much. perhaps that could help you in other projects
Joseph - yes I have been in the commercial construction business for over 30 years. Before I did this project I built my own pizza/oven smoker combo (here is the video - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Y2vuY2kL5bw.html), so even though I am not a mason by trade, I had done a fair bit of brick laying on that project. I used a mortar piping bag to try to fill in some joints inside the oven and it kept clogging up on me. I probably needed to thin out the mortar to make it work but got a little frustrated with it and gave up. It may have worked here but I didn't try it. The reason for wetting the brick - for me at least - it made the mortar adhere way, way better than buttering the brick dry. It also gave me more time to adjust the brick to level it out as the joint was workable for at least twice as long as when I didn't wet the brick. I can understand why regular masons don't do it this way because it is way slower, but wetting the brick does give you much more time to get the brick and joint just right.
For speed and just being cleaner since yor working inside, I've done this before right from cutting the brick in half. Is do exactly what your doing but use wedges or a spacer system with your line after the wall is complete should take a day or so, use a grout bag or a slicker and trowel depending how much experience you have.. finish your joints with a bullet jointer or whatever you prefer. But your job really turned out nicely, curious on how long it took
I did several courses of brick using that exact method, but it was way slower (at least it was for me) than just laying the bricks in a bed of mortar. I didn't include any footage of me trying that in the video to try to keep it from getting too long.
1963 isn't really too old of a house in a lot of places but it is around here. We bought it in 2000 and did a complete remodel - including putting a second story on the house. It doesn't look anything like it used to when we bought it.
Молодец мужик! Взял и сам все сделал. Аккуратно и красиво получилось. И главное что не муляж а настоящая стенка! Только телевизор надо побольше.. или проэктор.
Just a thought...the bricks could be cut in half (length not width) using a tile cutter! Easy to do since we did it for a different project. Then you would have had twice as much brick and less bulk on the wall. But you achieved a beautiful project!
I'm not sure I am misunderstanding your comment but I cut the brick in half down the length. I don't think a tile cutter would go deep enough to get all the way through the brick though unless you cut it from both sides.
You really didn't need the thin set with the brick being 2" deep. You could have just used masonry wall ties every 6th course@ 16" o/c. You caused yourself a lot of extra work and expense. Besides that it looks very nice.
You are probably right, but since the brick was being cut in half, I was worried that it would be just too thin for the height and didn't want to take a chance. Especially since I was hanging a pretty heavy TV on the wall. I wasn't about to try to calculate the max deflection and slenderness ratio on that wall. LOL!
Thanks! If you're going to actually do this, there are two things I want to point out. 1) If you build this on an elevated floor like a second floor or a floor with a basement below, make sure the floor will support the weight of the bricks. I didn't think the mention this in the video because I built my wall on a concrete slab on grade. And 2) make sure you mechanically attach the brick to the wall behind it. I don't mention this until 12.05 in the video, so a lot of people miss that very important detail. Good luck with it my man!
@@LeeMcNeil haha yeah I saw how you anchored the bricks, that was a great idea. I'm also doing this on a concrete slab. One thing I gotta figure out Is how to work around my baseboard heating. I can't put the brick on top of it. I might pick the smaller wall in the room and just remove that section. The house is well insulated.
@@Desh727 I would get a long 1-1/2" steel angle and screw it to the wall about 1/4" above the baseboard heater. It would probably be best to remove a 1-1/2" strip of drywall before you attach the angle (screw it right to the studs), which would eliminate the problem of the upper leg of the angle bumping the bottom course of brick out from the plane of the wall. This angle would become basically a lintel that you can lay the brick on. I would definitely not put it directly on the baseboard heater.
I love the idea about buying the hole square of bricks and cutting them in half with the wet saw. but i think I would have cut the halves in half too!. well i would have attempted to anyway. lol Nice wall tho. I want to do this.
Well the problem with cutting a brick multiple time, like slices, you end up with brick that don't have a natural face on them. A sliced section of brick looks quite a bit different than the actual outside face of it.
Any vids of the brick wall office room/den finished? Like to see how it all turned out with the crown molding and whatnot! Looks great by the way, thinking of this project myself with chicago brick veneers.. dont have your kind of patience....lol
