The bricks look great, except in one area...the columns! It is not the bricks but the dimensions of the columns. As per last weeks conversation with Joe about them we wanted to ensure they were very rectangular and not a slightly squashed square. He told us that they will be laid last so we can look at it later to see the dimensions. But with the weather closing in on Thursday afternoon they must have decided to do the columns rather than start the end of the house as it is more protected from the elements and would be better to get that done in a oneer next week. This is a guess as to what happened as I am thinking like a builder now. Pity the builder didn't think like me before he gave the go ahead with the column dimensions....uuuuuuurrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
The columns I wanted would be a 1 1/2 wide by 3 /12 deep brick so to elongate the columns and make them sleeker and not fat and square. They have done over half of one column in a 2 x 3 brick column which to me looks wrong...very wrong.....so very wrong I have a headache and my heart is pounding and I am being driven crazy with the way they look. I hope like hell they can do it how I want it or man will this Mummy be very unhappy indeed. It is ruling my entire day and that tells me I can't compromise and just leave them as they are. Infact to even type "leave them as they are" sends my stomach into upheaval and my eye starts twitching.
The bricks on the house so far looks really good and is till drying as we have had some wicked rain over the last 2 days! The neighbour had his subbies doing work on Friday and it was chucking down and the whole area was a muddy, boggy swimming pool. Unfortunately one of his guys had his van up the drive and as they had laid the drains all the way down the length of the drive earlier on that week the part of the drive that was filled in sunk a foot or two and so did the van while trying to back out of the drive. Nathan went up early hours this morning and the van was firmly entrenched in the ....um trench!
Check out pics of the completed brickwork and one of the muddy hole from whence the van was removed.
I gather the column had to be two bricks wide to get around the post (it looks almost at think as a brick is long), and yes to make it any smaller would have required changing the post and all the rest of it....
ReplyDeleteThen only 3 bricks long, well in my opinion, any longer and it would have been too "bold". I don't think the 2:3 ratio is all that bad... the golden ratio of architecture would be 2:3.236, which is closer to 3 than 3.5, and quarter bricks are a pain really.
I hope you are happy with the final product in the end. If you ask me, it's just a great entertaining (or washing drying) area.
Yes we are happy with the columns now that they are done. Just as I had seen them in the proportions on an Aussie build blog I really liked but hadn't accounted for the fact you guys use 90-110mm thick bricks where as ours bricks are 70mm thick and the bond didn't work. It is hard if the subbies just say you can't do it and huff and puff because it might mean it may need redoing. Once the brickie explained that was why it couldn't work (a day or so later) I was happy as I am more practical than most people I think. Thankfully all our other subbies have been wonderful and not so damn grumpy like our brickies. We love our portico and we just had the speakers put in and it will be great for the girls to have somewhere out of the sun to play as the NZ sun is so wickedly hot. I know what the Sun is like over there as I lived in Oz for nearly 7 years. Darned ozone hole!
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