Bricks on Concrete Porch

[Guv Bob]

Lovely Miseries Bob is pestering me to put brick on the porch. I have limited info and practically no experience using mortar except repairing small areas of concrete.

The story I got at HD was to get it good and clean first, then put down some kind of plasticized cement (can't remember any of this stuff right now.), then lay the bricks.

Instead of adding mortar as I go, what about putting down all the bricks first on the adhesive, and then pushing mortar down between them once they're in place?

[gfretwell]

They are talking about Ultraflex. It is in the tile department. This is very sticky stuff. I used it to stick pavers to my old concrete block shed

[dadiOH]

You could do that, grouting them in the same manner as tiles but the problem would be their surface texture. Bricks are rough, lots of minute low areas and it would be very difficult if not impossible to get excess mortar/grout cleaned off. There is no problem with that if you don't mind the look.

OTOH, it isn't all that hard to apply joint mortar as you go...sort of shape it on a hawk, pick up with a trowel and wipe it on, shove in the brick, tap & adjust as necessary. When the mortar sets up a bit, cut off any excess. Watch a couple of YouTube videos...you won't achieve the alacrity that comes with experience but you'll get the idea.