PSA: That old brick arch over a fireplace in a 1920s house took me three days to match

Client wanted the original arch rebuilt after a chimney repair, but the bricks were this weird, soft red with a handmade look. Spent a whole day just trying to source something close. Ended up having to custom cut and shape every single brick for the arch itself, about 80 of them, to get the curve right. Anyone else ever get stuck on a matching job that just wouldn't end?

3 comments

3 Comments

nina_harris392mo ago

Oh man, that sounds so familiar. I had a 1920s porch repair with bricks that were basically pink and crumbly. What finally worked for me was taking a good brick from the original wall to a local salvage yard. They let me dig through their loose brick piles for an hour and I found a batch that was a close color match. I still had to grind the edges of every one to get the old mortar off clean, but it beat trying to shape new ones.

-1

craig.tessa2mo ago

My old house in St. Louis had the same pink soft brick on the chimney. Honestly, the salvage yard trick is the only real fix for that era. I ended up mixing two different salvage batches to get the color variation right, because those old bricks were never uniform. Tbh, grinding the mortar was a full weekend with a cheap angle grinder and a whole lot of dust.

barbara841mo ago

God, @nina_harris39 that digging-through-salvage-piles trick is seriously the only way to go with those old pink bricks. I spent an afternoon at my local place doing the same thing, and honestly the dust from grinding those edges gets everywhere, but it's so worth it for a match that actually blends in.