The long brick wall of the Illinois office in 2019, a buff soldier band running under the eaves and across the wall below the windows
Case File 238

Breaking Up Blotchy Brick on an Illinois Office

The brick on this single-story office went up blotchy and off color. The company that made the brick paid to have it corrected rather than torn off. The building was photographed again nineteen years later and certified then.

Case No. 238
Structure Single-story office
Location Illinois
Stained 2000
Re-photographed 2019
Elapsed 19 years, Gold level

2000

  1. Close view of the wall in 2000 before the work, the field brick a patchy mix of pink, salmon and dull red with a course of upright buff units running across the top Before, 2000 View this photo larger
  2. The side elevation later in 2000, the brick reading as one even red across the wall with a buff band at the base, the ground still bare soil and fresh concrete After, 2000 View this photo larger

What was wrong

The box marked under Reason for project is complaint or problem, and the Issues line reads: there were blotchy and off-colored brick. Nothing had failed and nothing was dirty; the units did not agree with each other.

Hired by reads brick manufacturer, not the owner and not the mason. A brick company decided the color of a finished building it had supplied was its own problem, and paid for staining over tear-out.

What was done

Mineral stain, brushed into the brick by hand, and not across the whole wall. The file gives the scope in one line: we stained the soldier band to break up some of the patchy areas.

2019, nineteen years on

  1. The office in 2019 from an outside corner, the wall running away in one even red brick with buff soldier bands above and below the windows, and the certification stamp at the corner of the frame 19 Years After View this photo larger

What nineteen years prove

Same building, same wall, and brick that still reads as one range rather than as patches. The closing line on the form is that the range of the brick was evened out and nineteen years later it still looks good. On the certification scale that is Gold, which covers fifteen years and over. As of 2026 the work is twenty-six 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 238, transcribed beside the scan so it can be read on a phone and by a search engine.

Scan of the case study form for case 238, filled in and signed View the signed form full size
Project name
IL Office Building (2000)
Level
Gold. The scale runs Bronze at seven to nine years, Silver at ten and over, Gold at fifteen and over, Platinum at twenty and over.
Hired by
Brick manufacturer
Reason for project
Complaint or problem
Issue
"There were blotchy and off-colored brick."
What was corrected
"We stained the soldier band to break up some of the patchy areas."
Storyline
"We were able to even out the range of the brick and 19 years later it still looks good."
Address
Left blank, printed "Permission needed to release address"
Authorized
Donald A. Foster, signed, dated 2019
MAINEOF echo "main written: $(wc -c < $SP/cs238-main.html) bytes"
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Every job we stain enters the same discipline: photographed, revisited, re-photographed.

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