The color of dirt

When you think of brick floors, you might imagine bricks with mortar between them, like grout between tiles. This style reminds me of the east coast. Here’s a couple of pictures of what I’m talking about (random pics taken from google image search). In addition to being placed in mortar, these bricks are placed in a “herringbone” pattern.

The end result looks “busy” to me.

The traditional New Mexican brick floors are usually placed in a simpler, “running bond” pattern, with no mortar. I’ve posted pictures of that before, but here it is again. Actually, you’re probably getting tired of looking at pictures of brick floor, so here’s an adorable puppy sitting on the brick in the house we’re currently renting.

And here’s a funny one. Who takes pictures of falling apart – wait, what even is that? That’s me begging my daughter to please buy me more of these cloth flip-flop style slippers available at every corner store in Japan, but not available anywhere in this country. Amazon used to carry them – but alas, no more. Anyway, brick floors – with no mortar. (And the least-impressive pair of footwear I own.)

So what keeps the bricks in place? Sand. After the bricks are laid, sand is swept into all the cracks. It settles down in there, and then those bricks are in tight forever. They do not shift. Then an oil or water based sealant is applied, which ideally would be applied every few years thereafter. They call it a sealant, but it doesn’t actually seal the floors. You can see that water (and other spilled things) can seep down into the cracks, because the sand continues to settle through the years.

Our brick guy brought 3 kinds of sand up to the house for us to choose which we liked. Our options were:

  1. White “industrial” sand, purchased from Home Depot

2. “Play sand”, also purchased from Home Depot,

3. Arroyo sand, which apparently he literally dug up from a local arroyo.

I was ok with the white sand, but John thought it was two white.

And I don’t like either of the beige options. It sorta looks like dirt. I guess because it is?

So then I’m thinking, hmmm. Arroyo sand? Meaning we can just use the local dirt? Then why are we using beige dirt instead of pink dirt?

The sand (dirt?) in New Mexico varies in color from beige to pink, orange, red and purple. Our local dirt (sand?) in our immediate neighborhood varies from beige to pink.

So that’s how John and I ended up digging up some yard dirt this afternoon, to scatter all over our expensive, newly laid brick floors. We tried to pull most of the sticks and twigs and cactus thorns out of it.

Our pink dirt is so fine and powdery, the best tool to scoop it up with was a snow shovel, and the best tool to use to “cover our tracks” was a regular broom.

We’ll see if our brick guy is going to be ok with our pink dirt, but it looked the same to me as his “arroyo sand” except a better color match for the brick.

No, I am not making any of this up!