The final steps on the yellow brick road.

It feels good to be actually finishing projects on the barn lately- this time its the yellow brick road. When standing in the original barn before it was deconstructed in 2007, I always felt that the brick floor gave the building a unique feel. Since the bricks were simply laid on the ground without mortar, it was easy to remove them undamaged, so we saved as many as possible. Some areas were heavily coated with oil and grease from decades of tractor parking, but the majority of the bricks cleaned up nicely using a pressure washer (thanks mom and Lisa!). To incorporate the old bricks into the new floor, I formed a meandering pathway across the new barn slab before the concrete was poured, which looked like this: After the structure was roughed in, I mortared the salvaged bricks into the recessed pathway- it soon became aptly named, the 'Yellow Brick Road". Since the bricks were laid with tight joints, I wasn't sure exactly how to go about the grouting process. Having absolutely zero experience with tile work at the time didn't help- so I decided to leave it 'as is' and come back to it later...that was 2008! Finally, almost two years later, I vacuumed all the debris out of the cracks (which amounted to over 3 gallons of sawdust and wood chips), and got started. I mixed some home brew grout using 2.5 parts sand to 1 part Portland cement- then with my mom's help we worked the powder it into the cracks using an experimental sweeping, rubbing and putty knife-packing technique. This worked relatively well, albeit very messy.

Working in sections, the dry grout was packed into the joint lines, then the excess was vacuumed off the top of the bricks and gently wiped clean with sponges. Once the bricks were fairly clean, I sprayed water over the dry mix using an HPLV sprayer to start the hydration process. We worked from one end to the other in this manner, taking an entire day to do the pathway. I gave the pathway a few more sprayings of water over the next few days, letting the grout set up. Then it required about a dozen moppings to remove the haze of grout that was all over the rough-textured surface (I had put two coats of AFM Mexeseal on the bricks before starting the grouting process, but it didn't seem to help that much). After alot of scrubbing, here's the nearly finished product:

The grout was VERY slow to harden using this method, and required some touch up in certain places where there didn't seem to be enough Portland in the mix for it to set. I changed the sand/Portland ratio to 2:1 for the touch up work and this seemed to be much better...more lessons learned on the rocky road of barn-building.

With the concrete floor polished and stained, it was finally time to mortar in the brick pathway. The bricks were salvaged from the original barn when it was deconstructed a year ago. I mixed the mortar in small batches and worked my way across the barn, leveling out the bricks as I went. The seams will still need to be grouted, but for now it is good enough.

Eat my Dust.

Back to the job at hand. Armed with a circular saw, I attacked the pile of salvaged bricks that we removed from the original barn floor. After a couple days of cutting and fitting (and breathing through a respirator), I got them all set into their new home. Once the concrete floor is polished, the bricks will be leveled and mortared into place, forming a pathway through the barn.

This may not be the easiest way...

...but it was the only way I could think of to build the form for the brick pathway. First, I used some of the FSC lumber purchased for the wall framing (yes, someday I hope to actually put up walls!) to make 20 ft long temporary 'joists'. These were rested on the perimeter of the foundation form, spaced apart about 18" or so. I then attached strips of scrap plywood vertically down from the joists and resting on the foundation bed, following the desired outline of the pathway. Next I ripped more of that Masonite siding (the same stuff used to build the silo form) into 3" strips and attached them to the verticals to make the rounded edge for the pathway. The Masonite wants to break when bent into a tight radius, so I had to make hundreds of shallow kerf cuts in it wherever a sharp corner was made. This took some experimentation, but it worked out okay. Once it was shaped just right, I installed 'spreaders' across the inside to hold everything together (I was able to use old barn board scraps for this), then removed those joists to reveal the pathway form. Voila- all this took another couple of days to fabricate. The lengths I will go to just to salvage the old barn bricks!

Visions.

I have a vision. Not some heat-induced hallucination, but rather something that I came up with months ago while sitting in the house watching the snowflakes fall. The vision had to do with a 'circle theme' in the barn. It started with the idea of building an attached silo. Then it seemed like a great idea to install a curving pathway of bricks in the floor that would guide you through the building. Then, I wanted to incorporate curves into other architectural details like an arched roof, curved walls and countertops, etc. Very cool indeed. However, now I actually have to build these things that I've concocted in my head, and each un-straight element is going to present a new challenge. The current (and possibly most difficult) one is the brick pathway. I started by pounding in some reference stakes and tracing out the pathway in the compacted sand layer that I worked so hard to create. After a few changes to the shape, it looked pretty good, so I started digging (again!). After all that time spent putting dirt into the barn, now I'm shoveling it back out. Don't ask. But only a small amount had to be removed to provide a thickened slab under where the brick pathway would follow. After removing about 3" of fill from this area, I compacted everything one more time and it was DONE.

With Lisa's help, a layer of poly was put over the entire area to provide the vapor barrier once the slab is poured. You can vaguely see the outline of the pathway under the plastic, and next I will have to build special forms to contain the pathway while the slab is poured....