Brick cleaning

I've discovered another 'talent' to fall back on if my career in the computer technology industry doesn't pan out...brick cleaning.

Here's the story of my new found talent.
I'm walking the neighborhood with my girlfriend, Elle (what a great woman but that's another story). A couple of blocks down the street from my little bungalow, we walk by a demolition site. Seems another old bungalow bit the dust in order to make way for yet another high density townhome development. All together now, everybody say, awwwwwwwwww....

Well, my bunglow was built in 1915 and has an orangish colored brick facade. I have no idea when the facade was constructed but the bricks appear old and faded and certainly are not something you can pick up at Home Depot. Anyway, the deceased bungalow just happened to have had a similarly constructed brick facade...orangish colored bricks with three holes in each brick.

So, after chatting with the nice gentlemen with the huge dump truck and earth moving machine, I learned that these bricks were destined for the land fill...along with the rest of the walls, roof, floor, and...Tweety bird (yea, a big giant Tweety Bird was slumped over in the front yard...go figure. Anyway, I was given permission to haul off as many bricks as I wanted. Oh boy, yet another use for my little truck (have lived in Texas for over 30 years and less than two years ago, I bought my first pickup...another story for another time).

Elle helped me with the first load and we subsequently built a nice little flower holding thingy in the front yard. You know, that box, or wall, or whatever you call that little wall of bricks that go around a bunch of good dirt that's used to plant stuff in.

Anyway, before we could actually use the bricks, we....I mean I, had to clean the bricks as they had lots of old mortar on them. That's one of the downsides of free, used, bricks. But, after a few bricks, I figured out what needs to be done to clean bricks...which I am now passing on to you.

Here's the stuff needed

• Dirty bricks...not just dirt but bricks with old mortar attached
• work gloves
• claw hammer
• large screwdriver or pick
• safety goggles
• safety mask
• outdoor garbage can

Here's what you do

• Put on work gloves, safety goggles, and safety mask (there's gonna be a lot of mortar chips and dust flying everywhere)
• hold one brick over the garbage can and use the claw of the hammer to shear off the mortar...after a while, you can get pretty good at it
• After mortar is off brick, use screw driver to poke out the mortar in the holes of the brick
• Stack your nice clean bricks
• Periodically, take a break as bricks get heavy after pounding on them with a hammer.

After building the little flower bed thingy, I still have over 100 clean bricks. Although I have no idea what to do with them yet; when I need 'em, I'll have 'em!