All brick home built 4 years ago. Adding 700 sq. ft to the back of the house.
We added a 2′ offset to make for an easier transition with the brick.
Researched brick / mortar same company still makes it. We order it – use the
same brick / mortar / mason / cleaner. However over the course of the 4
years the same brick is vastly different – to the point of calling the brick by
a different name. We know that the brick can be stained to “match” to the tune
of 4,000 – 6,000 dollars. The brick company rep has been to the site took pictures,
old and new bricks back to the factory. He said “I have never seen this much
difference on an addittion.” The brick is their #1 seller and very few runs are the
same. The brick is only made every 6-8 weeks not to mention distribution allocation.
QUESTION: Has anyone ever had a manufactuer pay for staining or agree that they
made a mistake. We do have run #’s and dates they were made.
Replies
I don't expect brick to be much more than a close match. How close yours is - I don't know - but it will never be perfect.
Got any pictures you can size to under a hundred KB and atach here?
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QUESTION: Has anyone ever had a manufactuer pay for staining or agree that they
made a mistake.
Every brick or tile manufacturer I've ever come in contact with, or even heard of, states that colors do vary from lot to lot. I think it is asking a lot to expect them to pick up the check for perfectly matching past lots of brick.
Brick ordered at different times rarely match. Even different sand can make a difference in the overall appearance of the job. It's just one of the kinks of the building industry. It's not the brick companies fault or anything. Sometimes if I'm building a house that has a brick foundation and brick veneer, even though I won't need the veneer brick for another 2 or 3 months and I know it will get in the way in the mean time I'll go ahead and order it at the same time as the foundation brick so that I won't have problems with different colored batches.
I have been selling brick for over twenty years and while I can understand your issue I would be very supprised to see the manufacture foot the bill in this case. There have been occasions where they have when the brick are all ordered and made at the same time and for some reason there is a color diffrence but even then it is a stretch for the manufacture to pick up the bill. What really puzzels me is how they could have looked the same at time of instalation and now look so diffirent.
I would and did expect there to be a slight difference in 4 years. The brick on the original house matches that of the sample boards and the web page of the brick. It has a "white sand washed coating" the brick on the addition does not have the white coating nor does it have the same "flash" brick in the 9500 bricks used for the addition. The brick rep of 15 yaers traveled 6 hrs to see these bricks and after 30 minutes of looking at both bricks did not have an answer.
Clients ask that all the time, filling in old windows, getting bricks to match, etc.. Always tell them that unless they've got extra left over from before, it'll never happen. Especially if it's a monolithic color and not a blend. One of those unfortunate quirks of design: sometimes something completely different looks less glaring than trying to match and being off by a hair.