Enhance the Look of Your Home With a Brick Porch

A brick porch made with brick and concrete is the common type of porch homeowners look at when they want to build a porch onto their homes. The typical design is a rounded one with the concrete forming the underlying base for the structure. You first have to excavate the area in which you intend to build the porch and pour a layer of crushed rock into the excavated space. Four to six inches of this rock is the norm as the base.

Rent a compactor to make sure that the rock is pushed down and evened out. By running the compactor over the crushed rock several times, you will ensure that the base is solid. Fill in the remaining portion of the excavated area with a fine layer of sand to a height of between one and three inches. The next step is to fill the excavated area with a layer if concrete. You should have between three and six inches of concrete in a slab as the main support for the floor and the walls. Such a porch will be heavy and if you build it right on the ground, it will move with the expansion and contraction of the soil.

Now you can start putting the bricks in place in whatever decorative style you prefer. You will have to mix mortar and apply it to all sides of the brick, scraping off the excess mortar to make the surface even. The bricks you place in the doorway to your home should be angles downward to prevent any moisture or water from getting inside. This downward slope will help the water to drain away.

Work around all three sides of the porch when laying the bricks in place so that everything remains uniform. There will be times when you need only partial bricks and if the smaller bricks you purchase will not work in these places, you may have to cut the bricks. There are tools you can rent for this purpose as well.

When you get close to the top of the porch, you should angle the bricks so that they match the slope of the roof. Bringing them up even all the way around could cause problems later on because water will pool on a flat roof.

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