Changing White Brick Bands to Red at Clark Center

What was wrong

Nothing. The reason on the file is a color change, and the issue line is one sentence: they wanted to change the white brick to red. A business hired it, not a brick manufacturer and not a mason.

That makes it the harder job. The file names the brick as hard fired, low absorption, one hundred percent clay, in white and buff. Brick that dense takes stain least willingly, and there was no red already in the wall to work toward.

What was done

Mineral stain, brushed on by hand, unit by unit, red onto white. The file is candid about the method: a change this drastic put color theory out of reach, so the color had to be built up in passes rather than shifted a step. The client asked how long it would last. The second set of photographs is the answer.

What twenty-four years prove

Same walls, still red. In the 2019 frames the two window bands read a shade lighter than the courses around them, which is what built color on white brick looks like beside brick that came out of the kiln red. On the certification scale that is Platinum, the top band, which covers twenty years and over. As of 2026 the work is thirty-one years old, and the 2019 certification is the most recent record on it.

The signed file

Every certified job gets the same form, signed on the day someone goes back to the building. This is the one for case 026, transcribed beside the scan so it can be read on a phone and by a search engine.