I am in the process of re-doing a brick rowlock border on a concrete walk for one of my projects. I usually don’t do any brick work myself but since the mason I hired did a terrible job and this is the only thing left on the project, I decided to rip it up and knock it out myself.

My question is about the footing that was poured. Since the top of the rowlock needed to be flush with the top of the concrete, I decided to form the walk out of 2×4’s and leave it up off the ground 3.5″ for the rowlock footing. It was all poured at once and ran out below the forms the way it should and was troweled flat, but not flat enough. Some of the concrete was higher than the bottom of the form. I’ve had to use solid brick for some of it and cut a 1/2″ +/- off of some to get them to end up flush with the walk and still be bedded. It’s not a big deal and it’s too late to change it now, but does anyone have any experience with this and if so, how would you do it so the rowlock footing would be consistent?