2000 bricks arrived for the garden wall last week. I also saved 1500 of the original bricks. Now I have a lot of bricks.

I had planned to use new bricks but the lead time is too long at the moment so I went for reclaims. The bricks came from Loaded with bricks in Birmingham and just about all of them look useable which is surprisingly good for reclaims.

The size and colour of the new bricks match the original bricks well. The originals are Bedford Clamps and are rare these days. The texture doesn’t quite match. but once there is mortar in there nobody will notice.

I’m planning to use the new bricks as headers and the original ones as stretchers (as the photo below) so I can retain the stripe of Bedford Clamps and also hide their spalled side. I forgot that there are twice as many stretchers as headers so my brick buying maths doesn’t quite work.

Next job is organising a hole for the foundations and getting the concrete poured. After that I should have a nice relaxing job laying bricks for some time.