July 14, 2020. Sheltering at Home Week 18
I’ve got a pile of antiques in my back yard. And I’m about to send them off to the dump.
They’re bricks, rose-red antique bricks — pavers — manufactured for the streets of San Francisco some time between 1913 an 1921 by the Atlas Paving Brick Company.
Unfortunately for the Atlas company, cobblestone streets were soon to be replaced by concrete and asphalt.
Fortunately for Jon and me, hundreds of these lovely chunks of clay found their way across the San Francisco Bay and into a staircase that wends its way across our backyard.
We’ve been walking on those bricks since we moved into our house in 1978. I couldn’t help noticing their unusual color right from the beginning. Also their solidity and weight — 9 1/2 pounds each!
Still, all these years, I had no idea that those pretty bricks had a history — until a few months ago, when Jon and I faced up to the fact that our backyard walkway was falling apart.
I got down on the ground, took a serious look at my old bricks, Googled the heck out of them, and found out they were antiques.
Just so you know, there are people who actually collect bricks. They study them. They can name the various bricky parts — lugs, marks, clasts, grog. And often they can tell you where your bricks came from, and when.
Dan Mosier is one of those people. He runs a website called California Bricks. Take a look. I’m serious. It’s fascinating.
Right now, Jon and I are wondering whether that old brick staircase of ours has to go. Some of the bricks have come loose and fallen off. Others have sunk below the others and become a tripping hazard. Is it time to send them to the dump?
No one will want my antique bricks, I’m told by various contractors. It’s too hard to chip off the mortar that’s stuck to them. And unless the bricks are reasonably clean, they’re useless.
(I call them my bricks, because, even though they belong to Jon as much as to me, I think they’re wonderful and Jon thinks they’re bricks.)
Meanwhile, those same contractors estimate that a new brick stairway, professionally done, would cost us tens of thousands of dollars. So would a stairway of concrete pavers or natural stone.
And so, if we decide to replace our antique staircase, Jon and I will have to settle for something cheaper: steps made of timber ties filled with decomposed granite, probably. They’d be pretty. They’d be rustic. They’d be reasonably eco-friendly.
But they wouldn’t be beautiful, rose-red pavers made in San Francisco 100 years ago.
For a walk down a truly beautiful garden path, go to “Point and Shoot Heaven: Photographing a Flower Garden Just Before Dusk.” As for the challenges of indoor gardening, see: “The Dracena Is Dead. Long Live the Dracena.”
What is the terrain like at the end of the stairs? Perhaps you need a mortar-less Terrace and path. Repurposing is so satisfying.
The terrace at the bottom of the yard is nice and flat — it has new retaining walls. The backyard slopes down to the terrace, and we are told that timber ties and decomposed granite would work as a staircase; it’s cheaper than stone or brick on mortar. But it’s still really expensive. It would look like this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/301037556347840925/
So, I’m thinking, why not just patch up the brick staircase and hope the economy revives before we spend all that money.
Don’t send them to the dump! Put them out on the street with a sign, “Free antique bricks from 1918” and they will be picked up by someone with as strong a love for history as you.
Great idea. But those things weigh almost 10 pounds each. Somebody has to dig them up, cart them up two flights of stairs to the street, where they will block traffic; there are hundreds of them. Now… if someone wants to come and dig them up and cart them away, that’s a thought. But a lot of them have mortar stuck to them, and can’t be reused. I tried knocking the mortar off with a hammer. Nothing happened. What I think I might do is salvage the few that are in good shape and use them somewhere in the garden. Then pay somebody a huge amount of money to take them to the dump. Or wherever old bricks go to die.
Post just that “free antique bricks. 10# each. You much dig up and haul away.” If you leave enough time you might get a taker. And at least you tried.
Good idea. We have that online platform Next Door here, and that might be a place to start. But . . . I’d kind of like to find a way to use some of them here.