How I rebuilt a curved brick garden wall
Bricklayer Stu Crompton rebuilds a customer's curved garden wall: setting a curve out free-hand, stepping it up the slope, weep holes and ties, and a brick-on-edge top in Staffordshire blues.
The video above has been watched more than four and a half million times. It’s mostly music over the build, with one tip in it about brick sizes that I’ve put at the bottom of this page, because it’s the sort of thing that explains a lot of other walls.
The job I’m going to talk you through is a different one: a customer’s old curved garden wall that we knocked down and rebuilt in the summer of 2018. I filmed that one in three parts and I talk as I go, so it’s the one with the detail in it.
The job
Knock the old curved wall down, rebuild it, point it off in black mortar. Brick on edge in Staffordshire blues across the top, some plinth bricks, and a pillar to rebuild at the end of it.
The garden rises as it goes along, so the wall had to follow the levels as well as hold a clean curve. That’s two things to get right at once, and it’s why this one took longer than I thought it would.
Working the levels out first
The wall next to it was pretty level, I checked it. This one follows the grass upwards, and I only lay level. So before anything went up I had to work out how it was going to step.
A wall going up a slope still wants level courses. The slope gets taken up in the steps, not by letting the brickwork drift out of level. Get that wrong and you can see it from the other end of the garden.
Knocking the old one down
By dinner on day one it was pretty much all down, which gave us a clear look at the ground and the shape the new wall had to follow. Day two the mix went on, the bricks and cement turned up, and we cracked on.
Weep holes before the brickwork goes up
I drilled some holes through and put weeps in, every metre or so. There’s moisture in that grass and in the ground behind a garden wall, and it wants somewhere to drop out.
It’s nothing while the wall’s going up. It’s a proper job to put right afterwards.
A curve is free-hand work
You can’t lay a curve to a line. A string pulled tight is straight, so the line can’t help you. It’s all free-hand, and you’re checking it every course.
That’s the whole reason curved work costs more per metre than a straight run. I’ll be honest with you, I underestimated this job. It’s intricate, it took a lot longer, and a small error at one end shows all the way along.
Ties
I put normal ties in to support the new work as it went up, and then some extra ties near the top as a precaution.
What a particular wall actually needs depends on what it’s built off and what it’s tying into. That’s a design thing for your job, not something to copy off a video of mine.
Jointing in the heat
It was hot and the mortar was drying that fast I was stopping to joint every course, sometimes every two. Normally you’d get a good lot more built before you go back to it.
You judge it on the mortar, not on the clock. Firm enough to take the finish, not so dry that it drags or the joint breaks away. Weather, mix and brick all change when that moment is.
Blues on edge across the top
The top is brick on edge in Staffordshire blues. It’s three blues to one brick, one, two, three, so you need plenty of them and you want to set it out before any mortar goes on.
I made a little example first so the customer could see what the top was going to look like. On a curve the brick on edge has to follow the sweep as carefully as the wall does.
And you clean it as you go. Every time. Mortar on a blue brick is ten times the job once it’s dried on.
The customer changed it halfway through
On the Saturday they wanted a couple of tweaks. We took one top course off, that bit was getting tanked and rendered anyway, and put a few more bricks on to make extra steps so the drop wasn’t as severe.
They’d seen it built and decided they wanted it softer, which is fair enough. Proportions are easier to judge in brick than on a drawing. If you’re the customer, that’s the argument for saying something early, while it’s still a morning’s work rather than half a wall.
That tip about brick sizes
This is the bit from the video at the top of the page. I went over the wall with a soft brush and measured the bricks: 215 instead of 206.
That’s why your perps come out a bit bigger or smaller on some walls. The bricks aren’t all the size they’re supposed to be. These ones were on special offer, which explained it.
It’s another reason to set the work out before you commit to a bond or a pattern. You set out to the bricks that turned up, not the bricks in the book.
Watch the job
- Building a Curved Brick Wall, the video at the top of this page
- Curved Garden Wall, part 1, knocking the old one down and starting the rebuild
- Curved Garden Wall, part 2, the steps, the ties and the customer’s changes
- Curved Brick Wall Finished, part 3, the blues on edge and the finish
- Building Curved Brick Wall From Start to Finish, a different curved wall the whole way through
- Curved Wall and Brick on Edge, more brick on edge, and cleaning as you go
Thinking about a curved wall at your place?
Expect it to take longer than a straight wall of the same length, and expect that time to be in the price. When you get someone out, show them the curve, show them the slope and tell them how you want the top finished.
Then ask three things: how they’ll set the curve out, how they’ll deal with the change of level, and what’s going on top. If they can answer those on the spot you’re talking to the right person.
Post the job free on Hard Hat Way and trades near you can see your photos and quote. The brick calculator will tell you roughly what to order, and the garden wall cost guide covers what a wall like this costs.