Masonry and Plastering E-Book

Mike Lawrence

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The house and garden offer many opportunities for the do-it-yourselfer to take on bricklaying, plastering and other masonry work which enhances the value of house and garden and keeps professionals' bills to a minimum. Many of the more basic jobs can be easily mastered by the competent DIY enthusiast and enables anyone to harness their own creative skills. This fully illustrated book shows you how to master the techniques of masonry and plastering, and then apply them to a range of practical jobs or special projects.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

THE BASICS

What to Tackle

Raw Materials

Tools and Equipment

Shopping and Safety

Mixing Mortar and Concrete

Setting Out for Bricklaying

Laying the First Course

Building Up the Wall

Forming Corners and Piers

Pointing and Other Bonds

Setting Out for Concreting

Using Formwork

Laying Concrete

Making Fixings into Masonry

Using Access Equipment

OUTDOOR JOBS

Planning Projects

Laying Slabs on Sand

Bedding Slabs on Mortar

Laying Crazy Paving

Laying Block Paving

Surfacing a Drive

Building Free-Standing Walls

Building Screen Block Walls

Building Steps in a Bank

Building Free-Standing Steps

Building Retaining Walls

Building Brick Arches

Laying Concrete Features

Building Planters and Creating Ponds

Fixing Fence Posts

INDOOR JOBS

Building a Fire Surround

Plastering Walls

Plastering Ceilings

Creating Arches

Creating Textured Finishes

MAINTENANCE AND REPAIRS

Repointing Brickwork

Patching Rendering

Patching Concrete Sills

Cleaning Masonry

Patching Paths and Drives

Levelling Uneven Paving

Fixing Loose Chimney Pots

Repairing Faulty Flashings

Curing Rising Damp

Levelling a Concrete Floor

Patching Damaged Plaster

Repairing Lath-and-Plaster

Repairing Plasterboard

Restoring Plaster Mouldings

EXPENSIVE JOBS

Finding a Contractor

Quotations

FACTS AND FIGURES

Bricks

Walling Blocks

Paving Slabs and Blocks

Mortar and Concrete

Plaster and Plasterboard

Glossary and Useful Addresses

Other titles in the Crowood DIY series

Copyright

Introduction

The phrase ‘bricks and mortar’ is a modern euphemism for house and home; it is what every home owner spends a working life investing in, and it represents the biggest asset most of us ever own. Few people actually spend their lives laying bricks and mortar, but there are plenty of opportunities for the amateur to dabble in bricklaying and masonry work – especially in the garden – and in related crafts such as plastering. Indeed, with the high cost of employing professional craftsmen of all types, there is every incentive for the do-it-yourselfer to master these skills and to marry them to his or her own creative talents. The end product may be nothing more ambitious than a low garden wall or a feature fireplace in the living room, but it will have the unmistakable stamp of individuality on it.

Most of the building projects covered in this book are outdoor ones, for two reasons. The first is that your early attempts to get mortar to adhere to bricks, and bricks to stack up the way you want them to, are bound to lead to a certain amount of mess, and it is far easier to cope with this in the garden than in the house. The second is that few people actually want to knock their homes about structurally, but long to turn their gardens into a unique feature with a patio to catch the sun, walls and planters to display their favourite plants and shrubs to best effect, and perhaps an ornamental arch leading the way to the vegetable garden. This book will show you some of the things you can easily achieve.

Even if you decide that you would prefer to leave constructional projects to the professionals, you will still be faced with that seemingly endless task of keeping your property – its bricks and mortar, if you like – in sound condition. In the second part of the book you will find advice on everything from repointing walls and patching drives to repairing concrete floors and patching plaster. Each is a small but worthwhile step in maintaining the value of your investment, as well as in making your home a pleasant place to live.

THE BASICS

Most people think of working with bricks and mortar, concrete, paving slabs and walling blocks, even plastering walls and ceilings, as the ‘heavy’ side of do-it-yourself. Yet there can be few more rewarding ways of spending a day, a weekend, even a season, than in creating a structure of your very own from a formless pile of building materials. As you progress from humble beginnings to more elaborate projects, you will find that there is little mystique in the craft of bricklayer, stone mason or plasterer: all are classic examples of the old adage that practice makes perfect, and practice time will cost you nothing!

This section of the book looks briefly at some of the projects you may want to create, and at the basic skills you will need to carry them out.

What to Tackle Outdoors

If you have never laid a brick or mixed a bucketful of mortar in your life, it is best to start learning by tackling some basic outdoor building projects. Here are some you could consider.

Hard surfaces Whether you have inherited a virgin plot, a neglected wilderness or a reasonably well-kept garden, one job you are sure to want to tackle is the laying (or re-laying) of some hard surfaces to allow you to use the plot in all weathers. These could include a driveway for your car, a path round the house and down the garden to the greenhouse, a patio that catches the sun or allows you to admire the view, even an area for the children to play on when the lawn is too wet. Whichever of these you decide to create, you can use any of a wide range of building materials.

Your choice of materials for each of these surfaces will be decided by a combination of factors. One of the first you will think about is the cost, and somewhat surprisingly you will find that ‘seamless’ materials such as concrete and macadam cost broadly the same to lay per unit area as paving slabs and blocks (although there are variations in slab and block prices depending on type). The reason lies in the hidden costs of each type–the extras over and above the cost of the material itself.

There are other factors of equal importance, of course. To begin at the beginning, you need to think about how easy the chosen material will be to transport, to move around the site as well as to lay. For example, concrete is hard work to mix and move around in large quantities, while slabs and blocks are easier to handle and can obviously be transported in manageable quantities. Speed of laying, and the time within which the surface can be used, are important too. Concrete takes time to place and needs time to harden, as does macadam, while dry-laid blocks or slabs are quick to lay and can be used immediately. At the other extreme, it can take weeks to point a large area of crazy paving; bedding the pieces is the easy part of the job!

Fig 1 Acquiring some basic bricklaying skills will allow you to tackle a wide range of creative projects and also to carry out essential home maintenance jobs.

Think too about appearances and future maintenance. Concrete can discolour and break up in time, and major repairs can be difficult to carry out. Macadam can be softened by oil spillages, may become tacky in hot weather and will dent under point loads, but is easy to patch if necessary. Gravel is no good for sloping sites, needs regular raking and weed-killing and can escape onto lawns (or indoors on people’s shoes), but looks good and is a wonderful burglar deterrent – no one can tip-toe quietly up a gravel drive! Slabs and blocks offer the widest choice in surface appearance and once laid should need little maintenance.

What to Tackle

On the subject of looks, remember too that the shapes you want for your hard-surfaced areas may dictate which material you use; seamless materials and small blocks are much easier to lay in curved shapes than large paving slabs.

Apart from hard surfaces to walk, drive or sit on, you may also need areas of hard standing for other purposes – as bases for outbuildings, for example, or for a barbecue in the garden. Here looks are less important than performance, and concrete slabs are often the best choice.

Walls Walls are next on the agenda. What you want to build depends to a large extent on your site; you will obviously have more scope for elaborate construction projects on a sloping site, but even on a level one you can build anything from low-level planters (which also have the advantage of making gardening easier if you have arthritic knees or a bad back) to feature walls dividing up the garden or creating screened and sheltered spots for sitting out. Walls undoubtedly make the best boundaries too, especially at the front of your property where privacy and security are particularly important features, and here the scale of the job gives you plenty of scope for originality.

Your choice of walling materials is even wider than for hard surfaces, ranging from bricks to natural stone (if you can get it or are able to afford it), or the host of imitations of natural walling materials now available. Here your main criterion must be looks; laying a brick, a walling block or a lump of sandstone involves broadly the same technique and takes much the same time – performance is much of a muchness too.

Which one you choose will depend on two things: the sort of garden you want to create, and whether you want to match the materials used to build your house. As far as the first point is concerned, brick walls tend to look much more formal than stone ones, while the second point speaks for itself.

Steps These are a natural progression, especially if you have a sloping site, since they will link individual areas of the garden together once you have used retaining walls to create a series of terraces up or down the slope. Even on comparatively level sites, you may need steps to provide access to the house. You can set them into the slopes or build free-standing structures; it all depends on the demands of the site. However, in either case steps involve a subtle blend of the building materials you select for both hard surfaces and walls, since their treads and risers combine elements of both.

There are a wealth of other constructional features you can add to your garden, including ornamental planters, archways – free-standing, or incorporated into your dividing or boundary walls – and, perhaps most attractive of all, water features. The sound of running water in a garden is one of the most relaxing things on earth, tinkling merrily away in the sunshine, and even a still pond can be an attractive centre-piece on the patio or in the lawn. It will also allow you to grow a range of aquatic plants, and will attract wildlife of all sorts to your garden – a source of great interest to all, especially to children.

Creating a pond has never been easier, with the range of rigid and flexible pond liners now available to let you form exactly the shape and size of pond you want. Remember too that you are not limited to in-ground pools; there is nothing to stop you incorporating one as a raised feature on your patio or elsewhere in the garden.

Fig 2 Your first outdoor building projects are likely to be relatively simple – some shallow steps or an area of paving, for example.

What to Tackle Indoors

Unless you are a competent enough do-it-yourselfer to tackle major internal structural alterations such as building or demolishing load-bearing walls, you are rather more restricted indoors as far as constructional projects are concerned.

The one major task that you may want to take on is plastering (or replastering) walls and ceilings – a skill that is well worth mastering, because it has such a high labour content. A bag of plaster costs only a few pounds, but employing a skilled plasterer to put it on the wall will set you back quite a sum. It is a skill that can be perfected only with practice, but you will find that after several abortive attempts to make the mix stay where you put it, you will suddenly get the knack! Even if you never get good enough to tackle large areas with confidence, you will still be able to do all sorts of smaller-scale jobs.

You can also use your new-found skill to create arch-shaped openings in doorways and between through rooms, thanks to the availability of wire mesh arch formers. These are rigid assemblies designed to be fitted within the tops of square openings, and come in a range of shapes (see page 66 for more details). Once the former is in place, all you have to do is to apply a skim of plaster over it.

Texturing wall and ceiling surfaces is a skill that is part-plastering, part-decorating. Textured finishes are not only a quick and inexpensive way of covering surfaces in less-than-perfect condition; they give you the opportunity to create your own three-dimensional designs and effects using a material that is both easy to apply and extremely durable in use.

If you want high-relief effects it is best to use a texturing compound (Artex is the best-known, and is a trade name that has become synonymous with textured finishes, as Formica has for plastic laminates). Some come in powder form and are mixed with water prior to being brushed onto the wall, while others are available ready-mixed. For lighter reliefs, you can use a textured emulsion paint instead. This has the advantage of being strippable (using a special chemical stripper) if you want a change of decor in the future; texturing compounds can be removed only with the help of a steam wallpaper stripper. See pages 67–8 for more details.

There is one popular indoor job that will need the bricklaying skills you have acquired from your outdoor building projects, and that is building a feature fireplace surround. With open fires coming back into fashion, many home owners are faced with having to reconstruct fire surrounds that were removed in the 1960s and 1970s (the heyday of the blocker-uppers, when many chimney breasts were reduced to flat-fronted uselessness). One of the most attractive solutions is to use a kit containing special bricks, natural or reconstructed stone, which are available in a wide range of stylos and sizes. See pages 60–1 for details.

Maintenance and Repairs

Apart from putting your new skills to creative use, you will also need them for a range of occasional repair jobs around the house. These are perhaps not as much fun, but are just as important to your home’s well-being. They are covered in Chapter 4.

Fig 3 As your skills improve you can start to build more elaborate projects such as a barbecue.

Raw Materials

Bricks

Without a doubt the most widely-used building materials are bricks. They have been around for thousands of years, and are as popular today as they ever were. They are versatile, easy to use, and can be very attractive, not least because of the random variations in colour and appearance that most bricks exhibit. Clay bricks are the commonest variety, but you may also come across bricks made from lime and sand (known as calcium silicate, sand-lime or flintlime bricks) or from concrete. There are literally hundreds of different types to choose from, but for practical purposes you can be confident of picking the right brick for the job if you consider three factors: the quality of the brick, its type and its shape.

Quality This is the most important factor, especially since most of the projects you will be working on will be outdoor ones and the bricks you use will have to be weatherproof. Bricks are classified into three qualities to indicate their intended usage. Internalquality bricks have no weather resistance, and are suitable only for internal use – rain penetration and frost damage will soon break them up out of doors. Ordinaryquality bricks can be used out of doors, but are not intended to stand up to severe exposure. You could therefore use them for the main body of a free-standing wall, for example, but not for the top course which will bear the brunt of the weather. Similarly, they should not be used for building earth-retaining walls, or for brickwork underground. For jobs like that you need the extra weather resistance of specialquality bricks; these are very dense, they do not absorb water, and are thus very durable. Stronger still are engineeringbricks, which are sometimes used to form a damp-proof course (DPC) in walls; you are unlikely to need these for garden projects.

Unfortunately, the quality is not marked on individual bricks, only on packs or pallets, so when you are ordering small quantities you will have to ensure that you tell your supplier what you will be using them for. If you are using large quantities, look for the following markings on outer wrappings: 0 means zero frost resistance (i.e. internal quality) M and F moderate and good frost resistance.

Type This describes the appearance of the brick. For general work, two types are widely used – commons and facing bricks. The former are just that; bricks you can use anywhere where appearance does not matter. Facing bricks have a decorative finish on the brick faces that will be exposed to the weather when they are built into a wall, and they come in a huge range of colours and textures. They will be your likeliest choice for most garden projects.

Fig 4 The different bricks you are likely to use for general bricklaying projects include faced bricks (belowleft), commons (centre) and facing bricks (right). Faced bricks have one ‘good’ face and end which is laid exposed, while facing bricks have good faces and ends all round. Commons are best reserved for out-of-sight brickwork.

There are two other terms you may come across when shopping for bricks. The first is stock brick, which describes the most commonly available brick in a particular district (such as the yellow Kentish brick known as the London stock). The term is virtually meaningless now that bricks made in one area can be easily transported to any other. The second is fletton, which describes clay bricks (commons or facings), made from shale found around Fletton (near Peterborough).

Shape This takes us into the realms of special bricks – in other words, bricks in shapes other than the standard oblong. Some are designed for use as wall cappings, (the exposed top course of a wall), and come in half-round, bull-nose, saddleback and other shapes. Then there are corner bricks for creating rounded internal or external corners and for finishing off capping runs, rounded end bricks, and so-called plinth bricks which have one top edge cut off at an angle of 45° and which are used to step back the face of a wall neatly where the thickness is reduced above a plinth. All come in a range of colours and finishes, and are either ordinary or special quality (cappings are always special quality). You generally have to order them as few merchants carry large stocks of special bricks.

Size This is unlikely to bother you much if you are using bricks only for garden projects, but for the record a standard brick measures 215 × 102.5 × 65mm (8½ × 4 × 2⅝in). So allowing for a standard 10mm (⅜in) thick mortar joint between adjacent bricks, the ‘work’ size is 225mm (8⅞in) long and 75mm (3in) high. Use these figures when you are calculating how many bricks you will need to build a wall of a given height and length (the answer is sixty bricks per square metre for a wall 102.5mm thick, and 120 for one 215mm thick).

Fig 5 Engineering bricks (belowleft) are used where you need great strength and resistance to water penetration – door steps, for example, or the bottom two courses of a garden wall. Calcium silicate bricks (centre) are made from a mixture of sand or flint and lime, and are much more uniform on colour and texture than clay bricks. They come in a wide range of colours. Concrete bricks (right) more closely resemble clay bricks, and come in many different colours and textures.

Walling Blocks

Man-made walling blocks are available in a range of imitations of natural stone, with the faces either weathered and smooth or textured to resemble natural split stone. They are made from reconstituted stone, (concrete mixed with crushed rock aggregate, often with added pigments to match the natural colour of sandstone or limestone), and are hydraulically pressed to give them strength. Colours range from shades of grey through the buffs to stronger sandstone hues.

Single blocks are widely available in a coordinated range of sizes so they can be laid in imitation of traditional stonework bonding patterns, with a mixture of large and small stones. They have flat tops and bottoms, and so are easy to lay in even, regular courses just like brickwork. Sizes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, so it is wise to check the precise dimensions once you have found a block you like the look of. A typical standard single-height block measures 230 or 300mm (9 or 12in) long, 100 or 150mm (4 or 6in) wide and 65mm (2⅝in) high.

You can also buy larger blocks which have their outer face moulded to resemble a number of smaller, randomly-shaped blocks, rather like a drystone wall. The joints between the individual ‘stones’ of these blocks are deeply recessed, so when they are laid the actual joints between the blocks need recessing to match, and should be made with a mortar that closely matches the colour of the block if your little deception is to go unnoticed! Both types come with matching coping stones.

Fig 6 Decorative garden walling blocks come in an immense variety of shapes, sizes, textures and colours, ranging from small brick-size units to large multiple stones. Most are sized in multiples of the standard brick height (65mm) to allow for even coursing, and have matching coping stones and pier caps.

Screen walling blocks These are a variation on the man-made walling theme. They are square, and are pierced with a variety of simple designs, allowing you to build them up into an attractive see-through screen wall. Since they are stack-bonded in columns, they need the support of piers at regular intervals, either of brick or blockwork, or built with special pier and corner blocks which have a hollow core, allowing the columns to be reinforced for extra strength – essential for walls built up to more than two blocks in height.

The blocks are generally 300mm (12in) square and 90mm (3½in) thick, with pier blocks 200mm (8in) tall so three pier or corner blocks match the height of two wall blocks. They are generally white or off-white and come with matching coping stones and pier caps.

Fig 7 Decorative screen walling blocks come in a number of pierced designs, and each range has matching pilaster blocks, coping stones and pier caps.

Paving Slabs

Almost all the paving slabs sold for DIY use are made from reconstituted stone, as used for walling blocks. The cheapest types are simply cast in a mould, and are rather brittle as a result; more expensive slabs are hydraulically pressed for extra strength, and often have a surface texture. This may be random and designed to resemble natural materials such as York stone or slate, or a regular pattern intended to imitate granite setts, herringbone brickwork or interlocking quarry tiles. There is a wide range of colours and surface textures available; squares and rectangles are by far the commonest shapes, but you can also buy hexagons, circular stepping-stones and slabs with quadrant cut-outs for paving round trees and other obstacles.

Sizes for regular slabs range from 225 or 300mm (9 or 12in) square up to 600mm (24in) square, with rectangles from 450 × 225mm (18 × 9in) up to 675 × 450mm (27 × 18in). Hexagons and circles are usually about 400mm (16in) across.

Fig 8 Most of the paving slabs available are made from reconstituted stone, and basic squares and rectangles come in dozens of colours and a range of different surface textures.

Paving Blocks

These are small concrete blocks resembling bricks, designed to be laid in interlocking patterns on a sand bed between fixed edge restraints. They come in a wide range of colours and textures and are mostly rectangular, measuring 200 × 100mm (8 × 4in) and 65mm (2½in) thick. Interlocking shapes are available too.

Fig 9 You can also buy paving slabs with pressed finishes that imitate materials such as granite setts, herringbone brick work or mosaic tiles. Round stepping stones let you lay a path across the lawn, while interlocking hexagons provide an alternative to a square grid layout.

Cement

Cement is the basic ingredient of both mortar (for bricklaying) and concrete; it is actually the adhesive that binds them both together. It is made from a mixture of lime and clay, ground to a powder, and sets when mixed with water and so needs to be kept perfectly dry if it is stored for any length of time (in fact, most cement now has a sell-by date, and supplies more than a few weeks old should be thrown away). Any cement that has become damp and has formed lumps should also be disposed of since it will not set properly even if the lumps are broken up.

Ordinary Portlandcement (commonly referred to as OPC) is the familiar grey powder which is the least expensive and most widely used type. White Portland cement is identical except for its colour, and is used for jobs demanding a white mortar or concrete finish – it is roughly twice the price of OPC. If you live in an area with clay soil, it may be worth asking your local authority’s Building Control Officer if you should use sulphate-resisting cement for constructional projects in contact with the soil.

Masonry cement is Portland cement with special additives (see opposite) that increase its plasticity, and it is used for making bricklaying and rendering mortars – it needs only the addition of sand to make a good mortar. It should not be used for making concrete.

Fig 10 The basic ingredients for mortar are Portland cement (foreground) and soft bricklaying sand. For concrete, sharp sand is used instead, with the addition of small graded stones called aggregate.

Aggregates

The other major ingredient of mortar and concrete mixes are the aggregates which the cement binds together.

Sand is used to make both mortar and concrete, and contains particles no bigger than will pass through a 5mm sieve. For bricklaying and rendering, you need so-called soft sand (also known as builders’ or bricklayers’ sand). This contains a high proportion of fine particles, which helps to create a good, workable mortar. For concreting, you use sharp concreting sand, which contains coarser particles. The colour of sand varies widely around the country, and is an important factor which affects the look of the mortar or concrete into which it is mixed.

Coarse aggregates are sieved stones (not chippings) sold in various size ranges (5 to 10mm, 10 to 20mm, 20 to 40mm, for example) for use along with sharp sand in making concrete; the larger the stones, the coarser the mix. You can also buy combined sand and coarse aggregate, known as all-inaggregates or ballast; these are ideal for general concreting work, but as the proportions of sand to stones in naturally-dug ballast can vary it is better to mix separate ingredients for jobs where the strength of the concrete is important – in particular for foundations.

Additives

The main additive used in mortar and concrete is a plasticiser, which increases the workability of the mix and assists in retaining water. Lime is the traditional plasticiser, and helps to reduce the strength of pure cement/sand mixes which would otherwise be too strong for general use. You can also buy liquid plasticisers which are added to the mix water.

Other additives which you may need to use for particular jobs are pigments for producing coloured mortar or concrete, waterproofing agents to improve their weathering properties, and frost-proofers which are used when working in cold weather. See page 90 for more details.

Plaster

Plaster for indoor use is based on gypsum, with other minerals sometimes added to make the plaster lighter in weight. It is usually applied as a two-coat system, with a relatively thick base coat or undercoat followed by a thinner finish coat.

Carlite plasters are the most widely available lightweight brand in the UK. The type to use on normal backgrounds such as bricks and lightweight building blocks is called Browning plaster; there is a special version called Browning HSB for use on very porous walls, where ordinary Browning plaster would crack. For plastering on dense non-absorbent surface such as concrete, you should use Carlite Bonding plaster instead. Carlite Finish plaster provides the top coat. For plastering over expanded metal mesh (when using arch formers, for example), you need a special grade called Metal Lathing plaster.

Thistle plasters are non-lightweight gypsum plasters. Thistle Browning is used, mixed with sharp sand, as an undercoat on normal backgrounds, with Thistle finish providing the finish coat. Thistle Board Finish is used on plasterboard.

Sirapite is another non-lightweight plaster, used mainly as a finish coat over cement/sand undercoats, and for repairs.

To cut down on the time needed to apply two-coat plaster systems, especially on very uneven backgrounds, you can buy so-called one-coat plasters. These can be applied in thicknesses of up to 50mm (2in) – four times the thickness of a normal two-coat system.

Lastly, if you are afraid of using traditional plasters you can buy small tubs of ready-mixed undercoat and finishing plaster which are ideal for patching work, but expensive for large areas.

Fig 11 Additives for mortar and concrete mixes include liquid plasticiser, waterproofer and frostproofer, while powder pigments allow you to create coloured mixes.

Fig 12 Gypsum plasters of all types are sold in sacks ready for mixing. Sirapite is used only as a finish plaster, and is popular with amateur plasterers because of its relatively slow setting time.

Fig 13 Ready-mixed undercoat and finish plasters are ideal for beginners but expensive for large areas.

Tools and Equipment

You will need quite a range of tools to carry out the sort of constructional and repair jobs dealt with in this book. Some of the more general-purpose tools such as a club hammer, a spirit level or a garden spade you will probably have already; other more specialist items will have to be bought as and when you need them. Some, expensive and seldom used, are better hired than bought, see page 19.

Mixing Tools

The first step for many building projects is mixing up raw materials for mortar, concrete or plaster. You can mix plaster and small quantities of mortar and concrete using nothing more sophisticated than a plastic bucket and a piece of wood, but for larger mixes you need a hard flat surface to work on, a common-or-garden spade to do the mixing and a bucket or watering-can for the mixing water. You can use your drive, path or patio for mixing mortar and concrete so long as you hose away the remains as soon as you have mixed and moved the pile to avoid staining the surface. If this is a problem, or you have not got a suitable area, you can buy strong plastic mixing trays about 1m (3ft) square from DIY superstores. They have a raised lip and can hold one 40kg bag of dry ready-mixed mortar, for example. Otherwise, use an old sheet of plywood.

TIP

If you intend to do a lot of building and plastering work, buy the best tools you can afford and be prepared to look after them like a tradesman does. They will give you far better service than cheap tools. In particular, keep them free of rust and dried-on mortar or plaster by washing them after use and smearing steel parts with a thin film of petroleum jelly.

Fig 14 The tools you will need for bricklaying include: hawk, pointing trowel, bricklaying trowel, stringline and pins, spirit levels (toprow); brick bolster, cold chisels and club hammer (bottomrow).

Bricklaying Tools

The key tool for laying bricks and walling blocks, and any other job involving using mortar, is the bricklayer’s trowel. This has a blade between 200 and 300mm (8 to 12in) long – large enough to deliver a reasonable amount of mortar in one go, yet not too heavy to handle. Its wooden or plastic handle is extremely useful for tamping bricks or blocks down into position once they have been laid. There are several designs, but the London pattern is the commonest. This has a cranked handle and a kite-shaped blade with a slightly rounded tip.

The pointingtrowel is its smaller relation, and is used as its name implies for pointing or finishing the surface of the mortar layers (called courses) between the bricks. The trowel blade is anything from 75 to 200mm (3 to 8in) long, and has a sharper point than the bricklaying trowel so it can reach into tight corners. It is a useful tool to have in your box for all sorts of small-scale repair jobs, as well as for pointing.

Also worth investing in, especially for repair work, is a hawk – a small square metal or plastic board with a handle attached to one face, used for carrying small quantities of mortar or plaster to wherever you are working.

There are two other tools you will need for laying bricks – one useful if you want to do things properly, and one essential. The first is a pair of bricklayer’spins and a stringline, used as a guide to ensure that the bricks in each course are laid level and in line with each other. Once the ends of the wall have been started, the pins are inserted into the mortar joints at each end of the wall and the stringline is stretched between them, see page 23. The second is a spiritlevel, which you need to check that your work is built to a true vertical and horizontal. On small scale jobs it can take the place of pins and stringline. You can get by with a small spirit level used in conjunction with a long timber straightedge, but if you intend to do more than the odd repair job it is well worth investing in a long lightweight aluminium builder’s level with vials to indicate true verticals as well as true horizontals.

You are bound to have to cut bricks, blocks and paving slabs at some stage during your bricklaying career, and the traditional tools for doing this are the brickbolster and clubhammer. The bolster is a type of cold chisel, and has a hexagonal shaft squared off at one end to form the hammer anvil (the end you hit), and flattened out at the other into a spade-shaped blade between 75 and 100mm (3 to 4in) wide. The tool is about 185mm (7½in) long overall, and is often sold with a plastic guard round the shaft to protect the hands from misguided hammer blows. The club hammer used to drive the chisel has a squared-off head weighing up to 1.8kg (4lb), attached to a short wooden shaft about 300mm (12in) long.

You will need some smaller coldchisels too, for cutting holes in walls, chiselling out plaster and repairing old pointing. They come in a wide range of sizes; most are square-ended like the brick bolster, but one, the plugging chisel, has an angled blade and a sharp point. It was designed for chopping holes in masonry for wooden plugs that provided fixing points for things like window frames (a job now done by wallplugs of various types) but is useful in hacking out old pointing.

Fig 15 A builder’s square is an essential aid for setting out foundations and for ensuring that brickwork is built up square. Make one from scrap timber with sides in the ratio of 3:4:5 to form a perfect right-angled triangle. The optimum size is 450:600: 750mm. Join the two shorter lengths with a halving joint, then add the longest piece to form a rigid structure.

Fig 16 A gauge rod is used to check that your brick courses are evenly spaced. It is a length of straight timber marked off along its length to represent 65mm high bricks separated by 10mm thick mortar courses.

For making fixings into masonry, you will need your power drill plus a range of masonrydrillbits. These have specially hardened tips, and come in a wide range of diameters and lengths.

That just about completes your tool requirements, at least for everyday building projects. You may need sundry things like a wheelbarrow for moving materials around, a stout timber plank for tamping concrete down and so on, and there are a couple of work aids you can make yourself. The first is a large builder’s square, made by fixing together three lengths of wood into a right-angled triangle. The second is a gaugerod – a length of wood marked off along its length to represent 65mm (2⅝in) wide bricks separated by 10mm (⅜in) wide mortar joints, and used to check that your walls are building up evenly.

Plastering Tools

If you plan to tackle plastering – or at any rate, plaster repairs – you will need a tool called a float or plasterer’s trowel. This has a rectangular steel blade measuring about 250 × 115mm (10 × 4½in) and a shaped wood or plastic handle, and is used for applying plaster to the wall and finishing it off smoothly. You will also need a hawk for holding small quantities of plaster close to the wall as you work, a flat piece of board (known as a spot board) for holding the mixed plaster, and lengths of scrap wood for use as plastering rules and guides.

Optional extras for plastering work include special cornertrowels with folded blades for finishing internal and external corners, and small pointing and mastic trowels for coaxing plaster into awkward or confined spaces.

Access Equipment

Last but not least, you are sure to need steps, a ladder, trestles, perhaps even a hired platform tower to enable you to work comfortably or reach inaccessible surfaces in and around the house. Make sure such equipment is in good order, properly erected and used safely, see page 19.

Fig 17 The basic tools for plastering are the rectangular steel float (bottomright) and the hawk (topleft). The wooden float is mainly used as a devilling float for keying undercoats, while the boat-shaped float is used for spreading thin screeds on floors. The tools on the spot board include internal and external corner trowels and a range of pointing and mastic trowels used for getting plaster into awkward corners where the steel float cannot reach.

Shopping and Safety

You will need quite a range of tools and materials for the various building and maintenance projects featured in this book. Where you shop for them depends on the scale and nature of the job; for a simple repair you may need to look no further than your local hardware store, but for more extensive projects you will make big savings by shopping around for materials. Here are the places to try.

Local DIY Shops

The typical independent high street DIY shop usually stocks things like fillers, small bags of dry ready-mixed mortar or patching plaster, flashing and other repair tapes, but is highly unlikely to stock any other building materials. You will probably be offered a choice of just one or two brands. You should also be able to buy any general-purpose tools you need but again with little brand choice.

Verdict Fine for small jobs if it has what you need and the convenience outweighs the disadvantage of highish prices. Generally good at offering helpful advice, and a useful source of contact for local contractors for large-scale jobs.