Drive around Howick or Glendowie for twenty minutes and you’ll see it. A lovely old brick house, and then, stuck to one end, a newer bit where the bricks are just… off. A touch too orange. Slightly smaller. Mortar the colour of wet cement. Nobody’s going to call the council about it, but you notice. Everyone notices.
I’ve been through a brick extension myself, and spent more evenings than I’d like to admit staring at brick samples on the deck. So this is less a how-to and more what I learned, a few of those lessons the hard way.
Bricks Don’t Stay the Same
First surprise. You can’t just ring up and order “the same bricks”. Manufacturers drop colours. One batch of clay fires a little different from the next. And your existing wall has had twenty or thirty years of sun, rain, moss and whatever else Auckland throws at it, so even an exact match looks too fresh and bright for a while.
It’s a bit of detective work, basically. With some art mixed in.
Find Out What You’ve Actually Got
Dig out the original plans if you have them, sometimes the brick is written right there. Have a poke around the garage or under the house too. Builders often left a few spares behind. We found six behind the water cylinder, which felt like winning Lotto.
Take a real brick shopping. Don’t rely on a photo. Phone cameras lie about colour, constantly.
And measure it. Brick sizes have shifted over the decades, and a few millimetres difference throws every course out. You’d see it from the street.
Go Hunting
Compare samples outside, in daylight. Shop lighting makes everything look the same. Wet the brick and look again, because rain changes the whole tone.
Sometimes a current product is close enough. Sometimes a blend of two colours gets nearer to that weathered look. And then there are reclaimed bricks from salvage yards, which can be spot-on since they’ve already aged. Just check they’re sound and that there’s enough for the whole job. Running short halfway is a nightmare.
Mortar Is Half the Look
I genuinely didn’t think about mortar until our bricklayer brought it up. Then I couldn’t stop seeing it. The colour of the joints, and how they’re finished, raked, flush or rounded, changes the whole wall.
Ours mixed up three or four small test patches and let them dry for a few days before we picked. Smart move. Wet mortar and dry mortar look like two different products.
The Join
Where old meets new is the tricky part. Looks-wise and structurally. Done well, you can barely find the line. Done badly, there’s an obvious seam, or worse, a crack creeping down it later as the two sections move a little differently.
This is not a job for someone who mostly builds letterboxes.
Copy the Fiddly Bits
Sills. Arches. The soldier course over the door. How the corners are finished. Repeat those details and the new wing reads as part of the house. Skip them and it always looks like an afterthought.
One Example I Liked
A family in Epsom added a garage and a new master bedroom wing to their villa. The team managed to source matching brickwork and blended the extension into the existing 20-year-old brick exterior. When it’s done that well, nobody asks which part is new. That’s the goal.
A Word on Veneer and the Rules
Most brick on newer NZ homes is brick veneer, a single skin of brick tied back to the timber frame with a cavity behind. There are building rules around the cavity, the ties and the flashings, all about keeping the house dry and safe. A lot of the time it counts as restricted building work, so it needs a Licensed Building Practitioner. Check your person is licensed and actually up to date on the current requirements.
Picking Who Does It
I’d want someone with heaps of residential brickwork behind them, and ideally extensions specifically. Ask for photos of old-meets-new jobs. Ask how they’d go about finding bricks for your place and what they’d do about the mortar. If the answers are vague, keep looking.
Around Auckland, Mr Singh Brick & Block Laying does residential brickwork, extensions and new builds included, and they’re LBP-registered. Could be worth a call if you’re at the planning stage.
Last Thing
It’s slow, fussy work, matching brick. Worth it though. Get the bricks right, sweat the mortar, hire someone good, and in a couple of years you’ll have trouble remembering where the old house ended. I can’t, with ours. Most days.
