Brick Walls for the Dummy DIY Mason

Brick wall terminology and parts

There's an old saying, "Never send a boy to do a man's job." Though the average age of our staff here at the Antisocial Network is well beyond the teens, we still think this particular saying is somewhat ageist. We think the saying would be better if it were more along the lines of "Never send a dumbass to do a competent person's job." Sadly, that's never been the motto at the internet content farms: around their offices, too often the motto seems to be "all dumbass every day: competence be damned!" How else would you get people like Shala Munroe of TheNest.com (another Leaf Group niche) who clearly demonstrated her incompetence in "How to Estimate the Cost of a Brick Fence." Shala has parlayed her "communications degree" into owning a flower shop, but her resume doesn't mention masonry work at all – and it definitely shows!

Shala's lack of familiarity with building a brick fence is pretty clear from her instructions for estimating the cost. According to Munroe, you should

Measure the length of the wall and count the pillars you'll need (one every six feet) -- so far so good Calculate the square footage of the panels between the pillars [hmmm....] and the square footage of the pillars [double hmmm] Multiply the total square footage of the pillars + panels by 5 to get the number of bricks you'll need Estimate the number of bags of mortar Our staff mason took one look at Shala's directions and said, "What a dumbass!" When asked why Shala's directions are the paragon of dumbassery, we learned that

1. Shala didn't bother mentioning the concrete footing you'll need to construct a brick wall
2. Shala doesn't know the difference between a brick veneer, such as you might find on a stick-frame building, and a free-standing wall: a free-standing wall more than about 3 feet tall should be two wythes thick, so she's already underestimating by a factor of two!
3. Shala says to use the area of the pillars (better known as "piers") in your estimate, but you actually need to use the volume of the pillars, which are thicker and usually taller than the panels between them
4. Shala doesn't even mention any sort of coping or pier caps... the idiot.

A DIY-er thoughtless enough to use Munroe's instructions could well end up underestimating the cost of his or her landscaping project by more than half; yet Shala was paid handsomely for her "research." And people wonder why we hand out so many Dumbass of the Day awards to the contributors at Demand Media...

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