I was buttering my bricks wrong for a whole year

I was on a job in Tacoma last fall, laying a garden wall, and my apprentice just stared at my trowel. He finally asked why I was putting the mortar on so thick. I said 'to make it stick, obviously.' He showed me his line, perfect and thin, and said his old boss called my way 'plastering, not laying.' I had been wasting mix and making a huge mess for months. Anyone else ever have a basic skill they were just doing backwards?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_claire13d ago

Feel like we all have that one thing we learned wrong. My dad taught me to hold a hammer a certain way, and it took a new guy on site to point out I was fighting the tool. Sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eyes to see the obvious.

finley_shah6413d ago

Reminds me of when I first started mixing mud and used way too much water. My mix would slump right off the trowel, and I couldn't figure out why my bricks slid everywhere. A guy on the crew finally told me it should hold its shape like stiff peanut butter, not soup. Felt like I had to relearn the whole job from scratch.

ray_sullivan13d ago

That peanut butter tip is a lifesaver, but I'd say it's more like smooth cookie dough than stiff peanut butter. If it's too stiff, you can't butter the brick properly and it won't seal. The real trick is getting it to stick to a trowel held upside down without moving.