The New Old Look; Cheaper Fakes Replace Standard Bricks:

Gene J. Koprowski. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Jan 17, 2004.  pg. F.01

Full Text (1015   words)

Copyright The Washington Post Company Jan 17, 2004

You don't have to live in a historic neighborhood to have a home with old-fashioned ambience.

"If you drive around in Northern Virginia, Maryland and D.C., you see a lot of new buildings, with all of this seemingly old stone work," said Randy Keck, an architectural sales manager for a firm in White Plains, Md., called Bel Air Road Supply, a White Plains brick distributor. "It's an interesting architectural look."

Old-fashioned bricks, pressed by hand into wooden molds, are quite expensive. "Someone who wants that look is not on a budget," said Kevin Gladd, a residential sales executive at Potomac Valley Brick & Supply Co. in Rockville.

But many customers still want an old-money aura, even if they do not come from old money. So they have driven the industry to come up with all manner of seemingly aged bricks, and blends, that cost much less than handmade bricks but look like they were cast from the same mold.

"These materials are the housing equivalent of pre-washed jeans," said Stephen Roulac, chief executive of the Roulac Group, a San Rafael, Calif.-based real estate consultancy. "Housing often represents for people continuity and connection to the past. Aged brick is a way of manifesting that approach. Older suburban developments had functionality, but no personality. This is a way of incorporating a personality into your home."

There are plenty of colors, styles and textures from which to choose. There are tumbled bricks, which provide a textured look to a home; red, smooth bricks; matte-glazed bricks; and rumbled bricks, with rough edges. Some are made through an extrusion process-bricks pressed by a machine. Others are made on something like an assembly line.

"The new textures-antiques, tumbles, rumbled, etcetera-are increasingly popular," said Lorelei Harloe, a spokeswoman for the Brick Industry Association, a Reston trade group that represents the nation's brick makers, distributors and suppliers. "They offer an extremely competitive look to handmades at a lower cost, in the grasp of many more home buyers."

Builders are using the aged look in new developments here, such as the increasingly common loft apartments and condos modeled after Manhattan's industrial conversions. But there are few abandoned factories here, so developers got creative.

An Atlanta developer, Winter Properties Inc., bought the old Lovejoy School at 12th and D Streets NE, and converted it to a loft building that combines old and old-looking brick. There are 44 one- and two-bedroom units in the building, with views of the Capitol and other local landmarks. The units feature old, exposed brick, and new custom-made bricks.

"We exposed the brick. It had been plastered over," said Carl Meinhardt, vice president of design at Winter Properties. "There was asbestos in the plaster, and we had to clean it. But it has a residue of cement on it. And that creates a warm feeling. People like that quality of heavy construction. It's not your typical sheetrock design. With the old look, it kind of implies that there aren't too many of these around. And that's an elitist reason underlying its popularity too."

The units range in size from 900 square feet to 1,800 square feet and are priced at $295,000 to $590,000, said Bob Silverman, chief executive of Winter Properties.

The brick look is not just for exteriors, as the Lovejoy school project demonstrates. And there are non-brick products available now that claim to mimic the look of brick indoors or out.

"You can use [artificial] brick to achieve an interior brick look, over your dry wall," said Anthony Stall, vice president of marketing at Dryvit Systems Inc., a West Warwick, R.I.-based maker of aged brick-looking exterior building finish that it calls Custom Brick. "You paint and prime the drywall. And install the Custom Brick. The interior applications are numerous."

The aged-looking fake brick was developed in recent years for Las Vegas hotels and Disney theme parks.

"The idea was to help recreate a Venetian hotel in Las Vegas in a real Italian style," Stall said. "The Custom Brick process is a finish application. It consists of a material that is put on by hand that achieves the grout color. Then you take the finish material and apply it over the template and the grout coat. While the finish material is wet, you peel off the template. And it dries in the shape of the bricks-and in the color you want.

"Bricks" made with Dryvit's process are 1/35th the weight of wall- assembly brick, Stall said.

Stall estimated that there are 400 million square feet of brick sold each year in the United States, and, if companies with products such as his can grab even a small percentage of that market, it would be a boon for sales. Handmade bricks can cost about 75 cents each. Extruded bricks are about 32 cents per brick. The newer fake brick finish costs even less, Stall said.

There are a number of suppliers from which consumers can choose old-looking bricks, including:

* Redland Brick Inc. of Williamsport, Pa., makes bricks that look old with its newest technology, including brick texturing equipment. The brick comes in red, white and a black-used look, among other colors.

* Brick & Tile Corp. of Lawrenceville, N.C., makes bricks in a variety of colors and textures, from full-range brownish reds to rose pinks to grays and tans and weathered whites, that can give a home an old-fashioned look.

* Robinson Brick Co. of Denver makes a product called Thinbrick, which can be used for interiors of homes.

Aged-looking brick can also be used to enhance an existing design, Stall said.

"You can add architectural design to the window, a decorative shape to a cornice," Stall said.

Another thing that homeowners are doing is blending different hues of bricks-and bricklike products-to create an aged aesthetic.

"If you blend five or six different brick colors that makes it appear as if the building has been there forever," Keck said. "You're seeing this a lot in neighborhoods like Georgetown. It's a pain for the mason to lay it. But, inside of a year, it looks like it has been there forever."

Section:  

REAL ESTATE

ISSN/ISBN:  

01908286

Text Word Count  

1015