Everything New Is Old Again.

 Seattle has a long love affair with brick. After the city-leveling fire of 1889 consumed 30 acres of downtown, the mayor, along with local businessmen, passed an ordinance that all reconstructed buildings and sidewalks in Seattle be built of fireproof materials. In 1900,  Daniel Houlahan, a bricklayer from California, founded the Builders Brick Company (the predecessor to today's Mutual Materials, still doing business in 2013). Naturally, I began to think that installing brick walls in our 1909 church might be the way to gracefully age some of the wall boarded add-on interior rooms in our unit at The Sanctuary.

Our 3,000 sq ft townhome is one of 12 units, carved out of the shell of the former First Church Christ Scientist. Shortly before the church was sold to developers, the open interior became the set for the film "The Spy and the Sparrow" in 2007. You can still sense the grandeur of the space in this stripped down location shoot photo from the Seattle PI.  

"The Spy and the Sparrow"  2007

Light, or the lack of it, is a never-ending issue for anyone choosing to live inside a structure with an almost three-foot concrete wall exterior. The developers of The Sanctuary were able to get a city variance to knock holes for new windows into some alley-facing walls. In our townhome, the darkest room--with no outside light-- is our media room. This room backs up against the very bottom center of the building--the garage, beneath the Grand Atrium--with no exterior access at all.

We wished to use this space as both a media room and an occasional guest room. Our second design challenge, after the lack of light,  was the very contemporary style of the cream-colored walls and overhead can lighting. There are no original design elements from the church in this basement room. My goal was to make the media room look as if it had been a former private space for a pastor of the original church in the 1900s.

I began with a search of local brick masons in Seattle. I wanted to use a reclaimed brick for consistency. There are original exposed brick walls in our master bath and kitchen.  Some bricks are crumbling and all have wood shims in the brick. In the 1900s, wooden shims were used in some of the mortar joints between the bricks to allow the nailing of pictures or trim to the brick wall as well as to hold the bricks in position until set.

So, in order to age our modern day media room addition, I was looking to find a way to apply a tumbled or reclaimed brick veneer to at least one wall. Mutual Materials offered reclaimed brick in thin veneers for installation (Mutual Materials Slimbrick™) but my much over-scheduled husband felt this might be a fun home improvement project that we could tackle together. He was right. You can do this as well.

In the end, we bricked one wall ourselves, using a product purchased on Amazon.com called Brick Web Thin Brick in Castle Gate.  The brick is thin--about 1/4"-- and 12 slices are attached to a web backer, then hung similar to wallpaper. There are YouTube videos on the product to help you get started.

My advice would be to install the Brick Web using a good construction glue rather than tile mastic. The weight of the brick causes the sheet to slide down the wall until it's dry and so for the first few tries we tapped in some finishing nails to keep the brick in place until adhesion. We began by prepping the room. Our newly installed hardwood floors were covered in plastic. We added cardboard sheets and plywood under the mortar buckets for more protection. Each web of brick was slotted into the next using Liquid Gold construction glue. The grouting process is very wet and very messy. 

It took about a day to hang the Think Brick product on the wall.We were on our way! To our absolute surprise, it took almost 30 hours to finish the grout. I've tiled before and mistakenly thought this part would be a snap.  Schedule a massage as a reward once you're finished.


But did we ever love the final results! We used a brick mortar for grout along with an aged-and-tumbled brick. While the color-match isn't the exactly the same as the existing brick in the kitchen and bath, you'd never see the walls side-by-side. The result is a brand-new brick wall that looks like it was part of the original 100-year old building. Our messy, novice application technique only added to the charm of the wall. Since baseboards cover the edge of uneven wallboard, we didn't need them here. We bricked right down to the floor. We could have used metal outlet boxes mounted onto the veneer for authenticity, but we chose to brick around our existing outlets as the furniture will hide these anyway. The brick veneer cuts easily with a special blade for masonry and a grinder tool. Next up-- the installation of a custom Murphy bed for guests, designed to match the golden-oaked end pew that the developers installed in the room as a stair rail.

And for fun, here are the lyrics to Everything Old is New Again by Peter Allen. In our church townhome, we did the opposite.

When trumpets were mellow
And every gal only had one fellow
No need to remember when
'Cause everything old is new again

Dancin' at church, Long Island, jazzy parties
Waiter bring us some more Baccardi
We'll order now, what they ordered then
'Cause everything old is new again

Get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails
Let's go backwards when forward fails
And movie stars you thought were alone then
Now are framed beside your bed

Don't throw the past away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again

Get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails
Put it on backwards when forward fails
Better leave Greta Garbo alone
Be a movie star on your own

And don't throw the past away
You might need it some other rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again

When everything old is new again

I might fall in love with you again