How to Create a Brick Border (Lay a Brick Roll lock)

Our patio porch has been an ongoing project for several years. In this post, I will share how we laid a brick border (brick roll lock) around the edge of our patio porch. A brick roll lock is a series of bricks laid on their face with their ends visible.

Here are the steps we took:

We laid out the bricks to get a feel for how many we would need. We mixed sand and mortar. And then added water and stirred with a hoe. We made a mortar base using a trowel. This was Neal’s job. We “buttered” each brick allowing some of the mortar to seep into each hole in the brick. This was my job. Neal placed the brick adjacent to the previous brick. We checked to be sure they were level as we laid each brick. We also used a string as our guide – – to be sure the row of brick was level as we went. Our sweet Daisy decided to eat some of the sand. ?After laying the brick, we planned to install tile. Hence, we used one of the actual tiles over a thin board (to compensate for the thin-set to adhere to the tile) to account for the thickness. This allowed us to double-check the accuracy of our brick roll lock height. Because the porch floor gradually sloped (to allow rainwater to run off), we had to cut some of the bricks on the two sides of the porch to make them the right height. We rented a brick saw from Home Depot. Daisy was inspecting our progress. Here is how we did the corners. We cut end and side out of one brick. We cut an just the flat side off of another brick. We mortared in the first corner piece. After it dried, we mortared in the flat piece. We also had to cut the ends off of a few bricks around some of the columns. Here is the front side. After about an hour or two (when the mortar started drying), we brushed each joint to give it a smoother finish. And then we rested. ☺️

Click HERE to learn how we built our porch fireplace.

Click HERE to learn how we built our porch columns.

Click HERE to learn how we installed our barn wood ceiling on our porch.

Click HERE to learn how we installed our simulated stone.

Click HERE to learn how we TOTALLY transformed our porch!

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