Que the music:
Ow, she’s a brick house…
She’s mighty-mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out
She’s a brick house….

Well, I did not build a brick house, but I built a bunch of other stuff out of brick, humming that song the whole time. I do need to increase my song repertoire involving bricks, as I’m sure this won’t be my last brick project.

If you have been following along, you know we are big on Craigslist picks (see: tractors, bathtubs, Snow White). One of my best Craigslist picks to date was a bunch of keyhole-shaped bricks. We got them for free. It did involve a bit of labour to remove and stack the bricks into a trailer…and then three separate trips to get it all back to the property. A lot of brick, but well worth it.

Brick Project #1: Potato Patch

The bricks had been sitting in a pile for a while, taking up space on our grass, until I decided to build a potato patch. By just stacking the bricks in a potato shape, round and round, it accomplished a few things: kept the kids busy and helping; got some bricks off the grass; created a place to plant our potatoes (and we did); got some potatoes; got to eat the potatoes…and they were good. The kids also liked the treasure-hunt-like aspect of finding the potatoes in the dirt. “Just like Easter! But I don’t want to eat this,” Connor said while picking.

Brick Project #2: Fire Pit

We had been using a makeshift cinder block fire pit since we first bought the property, which worked but it looked like crap.

So, our second brick project was a fire pit. That turned out pretty good and just in time for the fire ban, hahaha! Luckily our propane fire pit fit in it perfectly. It is winter now so it’s in full wood-burning mode, which looks way better than the cinder block.

Brick Project #3: Brick Wall

I dug out the back bank behind our trailer so we could tuck the trailer back a bit to open up the area. Well, it just became another thing that looked like crap. Since I had planned on covering the trailer for winter, and also wanted to create a bit of greenhouse space behind it, I needed to do something with the mud bank. So, yep: “brick wall.” Took a while, and a lot of brick, but I was happy with the results.

So there you go: 3 projects we did with one free Craigslist pick.

So if you have some brick you are thinking about getting rid of, think how you can repurpose it. Or give me a call–I will always take free brick! Or other stone, or building material, or plants…or anything else we can repurpose. Here is a stone staircase I curved out of a bank leading to the log cabin last year. What have you made out of your used brick?

Jay