Second Floor Walls

With all the steel work in place, construction of the second floor cavity walls can now start. The bricklayers get stuck in with laying the inner block work skin first. This sits straight on the steel on a bed of mortar and progresses very quickly. You can now start to see the shape of the new upstairs room and how the different size footprint of each storey works. Next, work starts on the outer skin. The first part of this, as the bricklayer explains, will be hidden by the small sections of sloping roof between the two storeys so it is built in block work.

Above this, the outer skin is built in reclaimed bricks as before. These guys certainly make it look easy – even when laying old bricks. Corners are built up first to produce stepped leads. These are carefully checked for plumb, level and alignment. A builders line can then be used to guide the rest of the courses between the corners. Remember, this is a Flemish bond wall with alternating headers and stretchers being laid. Because it’s a cavity wall, the headers are actually half bricks. These get cut with a sharp blow from a trowel. The cut edge will face inwards so it’s never seen and there’s less need for an accurate cut. Other cuts where the accuracy matters more, are done with a bolster and hammer. I’m sure most people wouldn’t be able to cut them quite so cleanly and accurately. I dread to think how many I’d waste!

The side wall of the main hose has two courses of red brick about ¾ of the way up. These are dentil courses where alternate headers project from the main line of brick work in a tooth like effect. The same detail needs to be replicated on the side wall of the new extension so that it blends in well with the original.

The bricklayer kindly talked me through the process of setting out these bricks to make sure it matched the old house perfectly. The corner is laid first with five headers. The first projects a little way then the second is laid in line with the main wall. The third projects and so on. With these first few bricks in place, a couple of stretchers are laid for the second course. This course all projects. Then, a few bricks starting the continuation of the yellow stocks are laid in line with the main wall.

With this corner in place, the cut headers for the first dentil course are set out – roughly spaced right along the wall till it meets the main house. The thing that’s tricky here is that you really want all the bricks to be headers with no cuts. So, spacings of the loose laid bricks are adjusted to eliminate the need for any cuts. It might mean that the joints are fractionally larger or smaller than normal but, the visual effect of no cut bricks in the dentil course is more important.

With the layout sorted, the two dentil courses are laid followed by the remainder of the flank wall using reclaimed yellow stocks.

If you live in the Hertfordshire area and are looking for a professional building contractor, you can get in touch with G L Smith and Sons via their website: http://www.glsmithandsons.co.uk/