Tried a herringbone pattern on a small garden wall last week

I was just messing around on a 4-foot retaining wall in my backyard in Austin and decided to try a herringbone layout with some old red clay bricks I had laying around. It actually came out way better than I expected, even though I had to cut like 15 bricks with my cheap chisel and it took me almost 6 hours total for a tiny wall. The pattern really pops from the street now, but I learned you gotta plan the cuts way ahead or you'll mess up the flow halfway through. Has anyone else tried herringbone on something small and had it get way more attention than you thought it would?

2 comments

2 Comments

charles67823d ago

Man, that's basically exactly what happened with me and a small herringbone path in my side yard last fall. I used salvaged pavers and spent way too long getting the cuts right with a wet saw, but now people slow down to look at it when they walk their dogs. I found that laying out the whole pattern dry first saved me a ton of headache with the angled cuts later on.

robert_smith3623d ago

That dry layout trick is a game changer for sure. @charles678 I discovered the same thing when I built a small diamond pattern in my backyard last summer. Took a whole weekend to lay it all out dry with spacers, making sure everything lined up before I even mixed any mortar. Saved me from having to recut at least half a dozen pieces that would have been way off otherwise.