How To Lay Bricks For Beginners Using a line
The beginner bricklaying tutorial watched over five million times. Stu walks through laying bricks to a line, from mixing mortar and gauging to keeping perps in line and bonding properly.
This is the video most people find when they search for how to lay bricks, and it’s the one Stu made specifically for beginners. Over thirteen minutes he walks through laying bricks to a line, the method every bricklayer uses to keep a wall straight and level over any length.
He starts with the mortar: a 4-to-1 mix with plasticiser, workable and buttery, and a reminder that sand varies by region so yours won’t look exactly like his. Then gauging, checking levels as each course goes on, so the wall rises evenly. The heart of the video is the line itself. The brick goes a paper-width off the line, never touching it, because every time a brick nudges the line the wall drifts a fraction and you won’t notice until it’s a banana. He shows a loose trowel action, pushing each brick down to the line and scraping the excess back, then keeping perps (the vertical joints) in line by looking at the course below, and staggering the bond so the wall is strong rather than just tidy.
There’s a written version of the same method in the how to lay bricks guide.
Who this is for: complete beginners, DIYers taking on a small wall, apprentices in their first weeks, and homeowners who want to understand what they’re looking at when a bricklayer is on site.
What a homeowner should expect from a good job: a straight wall with courses that stay level along the whole length, perps lined up vertically through the courses, a staggered bond with no straight joints running up the wall, and joints of an even thickness. If you sight along the top of a finished wall and it wanders, or the vertical joints zigzag, it wasn’t laid to a line properly.
