Home Renovation Trends - Brick Pavers

Bricks can be used almost anywhere inside or outside your home. They are found in walls, fireplaces, driveways, floors, on siding and are used to make back patios.

What Are Brick Pavers?
If you're planning to install bricks as a walkway or your patio, you'll need what are called brick pavers.

Keep in mind, a brick paver is not the same as the standard brick. The type of brick used in a fireplace chimney or on brick veneer is very porous and more soft than brick pavers.

These brick pavers are stronger than ordinary bricks and can withstand the elements better. They are more exposed when the bricks are layed out in a patio or driveway to water, temperature changes, and sunlight. If you install a brick sidewalk using regular bricks they will crack, chip, and crumble in no time.

You can buy brick pavers at a local home improvement or hardware store, but you'll get a better quality of brick pavers from a brick supplier or wholesale manufacturer. Because these bricks are very hard, they can be very hard to cut.

If you're doing it yourself, you'll need to make sure you either plan a paving path that has few or no curves or you'll need to make sure you've got cutting tools with masonry blades. And the more curves you have, the more wasted brick you'll have because you'll be cutting and leaving a lot of brick pieces behind. The more curves, in other words, the higher your budget.

Brick pavers look really good and they can last for a hundred years or more so I'll just let you in on some of the problems with brick:

Disadvantages to Brick Pavers

• Bricks can be more expensive that cheaper concrete blocks
• Pavers can collect moss easily - maintenance may be required to keep the slippery moss to a minimum
• Due to the firing process, bricks can really vary in size so a perfect fit will require playing around with multiple bricks to find the right one
• If you're working with multiple pallets of bricks, they could be from different batches. Make sure you or your brick installer takes bricks from both pallets as the pavers are being laid done to keep from having a giant color mark on the path or patio

Need to Find a Brick Installer?
If you're not doing the work yourself and would like to have brick pavers installed, you can submit your project to ConstructionDeal.com - at no cost.

Find brick contractors and save time and money. Get up to 4 quotes and pick the best quote. No more searching at random through your phone book - contractors call you! It's a fast, free and easy way to find brick masons.