Brick Matching

So the planning permission was granted. Of course, these things are never as simple as they sound and planning permission rarely comes without conditions attached; you must start the project within three years, you can't add any windows at the side - that sort of thing.

In our case, there's a condition about the bricks. We can't start the project until the planning officer is satisfied with the brick match for the front elevations, which presumably means we have to go into the planning office and show him the actual bricks we'll be using. We could always recycle the ones from the garage - there's enough of them - but the cleaning and removing of mortar will cost more than it would cost to source new ones.

I was home today when the brick matching man came to look at the house. He'd been sent by Carl the builder, who was sitting at our table last night firming up the finer details before we decided to commission him. We e-mailed him to offer the contract this morning and within two hours he had the brick man round. The brick man's called Aiden and he spents his life identifying the differences between buffs and greys, reds and browns. In our case, it's a purple.

'They're a bugger to match,' he comments. 'Give me an older house any day - anything less than fifty years old and the bricks will be discontinued. In your case you have one choice - I'll bring you a smple board and hopefully you'll like them.'

'One choice. Is that an actual choice?'

'Well, you know what I mean.'