Vancouver company gives old bricks new life

What: The company cleans and sells refurbished bricks that have been sliced into veneers.

Where: 1909 D East 5th St., Vancouver.

More information: www.decoradostone.com or call 360-694-6832.

When the new Freshii restaurant opens in Salmon Creek at the start of next year, the space will include one wall of “exposed” brick.

Not one brick has been set in mortar there, yet. But once installed, the wall will look as if it’s been standing for decades.

That’s because the bricks themselves were salvaged from old buildings around Vancouver by DeCorado Stone & Brick. Some came from a 1924 home near Mill Plain Blvd. Others came from the downtown Sparks Home Furnishings building, which was built in 1951 and is currently being redeveloped.

For this and other brick re-use projects, DeCorado cleans and slices bricks into thin veneers that find new life in buildings and homes. Owner Oskar Corado said his company is one of the few in the nation that repurposes old bricks for new uses. So far this year, Corado has sold about $60,000 in brick veneers, and he expects to move another $25,000 by the year’s end.

A century ago, bricks were made entirely by hand. Clay, sand and rock was mixed to form the desired color and texture. Next, the mixture was cut into bricks, and often stamped with the name of the brick manufacturer, or the date. Finally, the bricks were fired in a kiln. Each step left room for human-caused variation, from the color to the pebbly texture to the occasional char of over-baking.

“They had all of these beautiful characteristics that you can’t find in today’s mass-produced bricks,” Corado said. “New bricks are totally uniform and straightforward. They are all cut to a perfect 90 degrees, there is very little color variation.”

Corado, a self-described history buff and “stone and brick geek,” has been cutting stone since 1997. In 2007, he moved here from California. His business is named after his family’s original last name, which was shortened long before he was born.

The bulk of the company’s sales are in natural stone, not brick. Though DeCorado Stone & Brick has been around since 1998 — Corado moved the company from Southern California to Vancouver in 2007 — it only began offering brick veneers in November of last year.

Brick-collecting hobby

A longtime admirer of the old buildings found on the East Coast and Midwest, Corado started collecting old bricks as a hobby.

Then he realized that while there were plenty of suppliers for new bricks, no other company in the region offered bricks with the kind of history and patina that he admired. He called some salvage companies in the Midwest, who agreed to ship him loads of old bricks. Apparently, there isn’t widespread demand for the product yet.

“It baffles me,” Corado said, “because there’s so much brick that is being thrown away.”

Through August of this year, the City of Vancouver had issued a total of 67 demolition permits. And each building torn down likely resulted in loads of waste being dumped in landfills. In 2012, Washington produced 5.3 million tons of construction and demolition debris, according to a report by the state’s Department of Ecology.

Corado fine-tuned a process for cleaning the old bricks, then slicing off the face, or front, of each one. The resulting veneer of 1/2 inch to 5/8 inch thickness offers the look of a whole brick, but at a fraction of the weight, Corado said. Large expanses of full-depth brick are so heavy that buildings over one or two stories often have to be re-engineered to support the weight.

Today, DeCorado Stone & Brick stocks various veneers of bricks made between 1890 and 1952.

“Anything newer than that looks too modern,” Corado said.

So far, Corado has salvaged local bricks from old buildings removed from the Battle Ground High School campus, old hospitals and private homes. Many of the bricks in the area, he said, were manufactured by Hidden Brick, a pioneer company that operated in Vancouver from 1871 until 1962 and produced bricks for some of the city’s best-known buildings, including The Academy. Others came from Richmond Brick Company, of Richmond, Calif.

In some cases, Corado pays for the salvaged bricks. In other cases, people ask him to come and pick them up for free. In many cases, the owner saves money by not incurring the costs of dumping the bricks at a landfill.

Some of Corado’s bricks come from as far away as Illinois and Indiana, and are what he calls “Chicago brick.” Corado said he is making the product pencil out despite the transportation costs.

For Corado, the patina of old bricks is not only aesthetically pleasing and historically significant. It also jump-starts the imagination.

“I just think, the (Chicago) bricks could have come from an old speak-easy. Some of them have little holes in them,” he said. Could they be bullet holes? Who knows?”

Word of mouth

Corado is also starting to recycle old cobblestones into a new line of veneers.

Corado’s veneers start at about $7 to $10.50 per square foot, depending on the quantity and some details about the bricks including age. Older bricks with names and dates stamped on them, for example, tend to cost 20 to 25 percent more, or about $12.50 per square foot.

Corado has done little advertising of the new product, primarily relying on word of mouth and his relationships with local contractors and developers. So far, he has sold bricks to a handful of local customers but sees great potential for growth as word spreads.

Transportation costs for a ton of bricks can add up. But because Corado is one of only a handful of companies offering recycled brick veneers, some clients are willing to pay that extra money. And because the veneers are thinner than whole bricks, they weigh significantly less, too.

Corado said his products are gaining attention outside of the Vancouver area. Last fall, Corado sold refurbished bricks to encase the Netflix headquarters, in Los Gatos, Calif.

“They wanted this new building to have charisma, a patina, a little bit of old life … and they liked the idea of re-using material that would otherwise go into the dump,” Corado said.

Those were selling points for Freshii franchise owner Doug Gillespie when he decided to open a second Clark County location of the restaurant, which sells salads, soups and wraps to go.

Gillespie had come to know Corado as a frequent customer of his first Freshii restaurant, in the Grand Central shopping center. He knew that Corado had recently added recycled brick to his company’s offerings, so he contacted him about installing recycled brick in the new location.

“At Freshii, we try to be as sustainable and friendly to the earth as possible, using biodegradable and compostable packaging to generate the least amount of waste possible,” Gillespie said. “So being able to recycle and reuse brick locally … fits that vision that we have, to live well and also be good to the earth. And lucky for us, brick also looks really nice.”