From chickens to flowers
Did you know that we used to have chickens? Real, egg laying chickens, for which we built a very fancy chicken coop. But winters are quite harsh where we live, and without heating it was simply too hard for them to live there. So we decided to give them to another family.
What we were left with was a very nice little coop. And I decided to turn it into a potting shed.
Do not tell anyone, but already when we got the chickens, I had this thought in the back of my head that one day, when there are no more chickens, this building would be easy to turn into something else. So now it became a flower shed.
Why I chose brick paving
The potting shed needed a proper floor, because grass or bare soil just did not work for me. With wet weather it turns muddy very quickly and it is hard to keep anything clean.
I started looking at Pinterest and fell in love with those beautiful old brick floors. So I began researching where to get old bricks and whether anyone was selling theirs. I found several sellers, but the prices were crazy. People wanted a small fortune for one brick and the whole floor would have cost hundreds of euros.
I really wanted this project to be as affordable as possible, because the whole coop was originally built mostly from leftovers and reused materials. We only bought a few things new.
As I have said before, it really pays off to talk about your ideas. One day this topic came up in a conversation and it turned out that someone had a pile of old red bricks just lying around and was happy for us to come and get them.
So that is how we got our bricks and could start working.
Planning the size and layout
I knew I wanted the brick floor to extend a little both in front of and behind the shed, which meant that the floor needed to be bigger than the shed itself.
Behind the shed I wanted space to store shovels and garden tools. In front I wanted space for flower pots and also for the door to open onto the brick surface instead of into grass.
Luckily the old coop was not in the exact spot where I wanted the potting shed, so I could freely prepare the base and build the floor first.
Preparing the base
First I removed the turf, because I wanted the bricks to end up level with the surrounding lawn. Then I compacted the ground really well. You can use a proper tamper or a soil compactor for this. We had neither. Since I wanted to keep costs down, my husband made me a tamper from a heavy log with a handle.
If you want an especially strong base that can handle all kinds of weather, or if your soil is very wet, then you should dig deeper, add a layer of gravel and special bedding sand, and compact everything properly.
I added a layer of fine crushed stone on top of the soil, which we also had left over from another paving project. Then I compacted it and leveled it.
Laying the bricks
Then it was time to lay the bricks. I knew I wanted a simple herringbone pattern. The French herringbone looks beautiful, but it requires too many cuts and I did not want to waste so many bricks.
I sorted the bricks by size and color, because surprise, they were not all the same size.
First I laid the edges and then the middle line, so that the rows would stay straight. My husband helped me cut the edge pieces.
Binding the surface
When all the bricks were in place, they needed to be fixed into one solid surface. Usually when we lay paving stones, we just fill the joints with sand. This time I wanted to later cover everything with a white grout, so I needed a different solution.
I decided to fill the joints with a simple mix of cement and sand and then water it, so the cement would bind the bricks together. The joints had to stay only half full so that there would still be room for the white grout later. Otherwise I would not get the effect I wanted.
I let this dry for several days before moving on.
Adding the white grout
Next I mixed the white grout according to the instructions with water and sand and applied it evenly with a trowel. I tried to fill all the joints properly and since I wanted a slightly white washed look, I also covered the bricks with a thin layer. Where the layer became too thick, I added a bit of water and spread it with a sponge.
I let everything dry slowly under a tarp, because drying too fast can cause cracking and loss of strength.
The result and a small disclaimer
In the end, I am extremely happy with this floor. It has so much character and the bricks are no longer as aggressively red as they were before.
If you decide to try something similar, I cannot give any guarantees for my method. I took the risk that the floor might settle or crack over time. If you want to do it properly, or if you have a larger surface or a heavier structure on top of it, I recommend digging out the base properly, building it up according to proper standards, and using the correct jointing compound between the bricks without diluting it as much as I did.
But for our little potting shed, this felt like the right balance between beauty and budget.
