DEAD END

We’ve hit a bit of a brick wall in our endeavours to build a brick wall.  

Preparing the foundations

Using leftover rocks & mortar bits as ballast

Is it dry yet? 

Although we'd carefully removed the decorative blocks used in the construction of the original garden wall, it turns out there aren’t enough of them to re-build into a raised flower bed. 

It wouldn’t be an issue if all the walls in the neighbourhood had been built of ordinary type house bricks as then our new wall wouldn’t have looked out of place but most of the walls in the streets round these parts are made with larger patterned blocks, the sort you can’t buy in your usual builder’s merchants.

 

What kind of bricks are these?

I’ve searched a million different brick supplier websites to find a similar block or something that might be a close match but unless I go on a midnight brick nicking caper, then where am I going to get these blocks from? 

As luck would have it, a chance visit to the landscaping department at work has provided the solution to our mystery block problem. These decorative ‘bricks’ are called Thakenham rock face wall blocks and are supplied by a local company in a town called Storrington, not far from where we live.

 

In case you are looking for this type of decorative blocks

Interestingly (if you’re a brick nerd), these rock face wall blocks not only come in 2 different sizes but also have a clever L shaped block to reduce the headache of producing perfect corners.  We can now link the new blocks into the existing wall to give it stability, keeping it all neat and tidy at the same time.

 

Lots of different sizes & shapes available

The first couple of block layers have gone down and so far, so good. 

 

We’ve mixed up the blocks to randomly distribute the new red ones amongst the faded older ones and here’s what it should all look like once finished.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and building garden walls isn’t the work of 5 minutes so I’m having to learn to be patient and not ‘nag’ – it’ll be done when it’s done says the other half.