I've known for some time that I was going to have to do some masonry work on the house... Once upon a time, there was a little side porch on the house, and someone decided to close it in to expand the kitchen... That has meant any number of annoying little problems in the kitchen and especially the plumbing therein... The weird part of it all is that when they built the little foundation for that addition, they stuck a couple windows in it, even though they only led to a crawl space... (sarcasm)They had since been boarded up with OSB, which we all know holds up extremely well exposed to the elements at ground level... (/sarcasm) So when I looked into the crawlspace from my basement, there was light streaming in from outside, and a cold wind following it...
Well today I woke up to a beautiful fall day... It was sunny and clear if a little cool... While I wouldn't call it perfect to be doing masonry work, Too hot isn't good either... So I ripped out the old OSB, window, and frame... I then had to pull out all the scrap lumber, paneling, and sheetrock that some moron prior to me and stuffed in there... Then it was off to buy some bricks, and cement and home desperate...
Back to the house, mix cement, wet down slab after cleaning, butter and stack brick, clean up joints, and shezam, I had a nice brick plug for my wall... The only part I couldn't fill was the very top, because its behind the sheathing enough to make it annoying... Since its not a load bearing area, I'll simply wait until the cement sets, and then fill that space with expanding foam, wait for that to harden, and then trim it back neatly...
Now I really don't have much need to do cement, and brick work very often... I have the tools, because it has come up occasionally at a friends house, or out in PA at the farm... There was a decent cement mixing pan buried in the crap in the garage when I moved in, which made this much nicer... At $0.63 each for bricks from home desperate, I can assure you there will not be much masonry work done here from them... I'll go to a real supplier from now on, but since it was only 30 bricks, I didn't feel like waiting until they would be open tomorrow...
When I was done, and had cleaned the joints, and slab in front of it, I was quite happy with the result... All the joints are pretty consistent in size, and the courses are straight... They're not perfectly level as I was stuck following the grade of the slab, and trying to match the courses on either side of the opening... That won't matter soon enough, as next summer, I'll get some exterior coating from a family member who has a dealership in one of the big names in that type of product... While I'd actually have exposed brick all the way around, there are sections that have already been covered by a previous owner, and doing so will actually seal up the whole foundation from surface water, which will be a good thing...