Brick & block

Walls in brick or block, with the mortar joint counted in rather than guessed at.

Masonry counts the way tiling does, and for the same reason. A brick does not occupy its own size on the wall — it occupies its size plus the mortar joint around it, so the joint thickness changes how many bricks a wall takes. Quoting a fixed number of bricks per square foot works for one brick at one joint and is wrong everywhere else.

The other figure worth having before you start is the mortar. A bag lays roughly 125 bricks or 33 blocks, and running out halfway up a wall is worse than it sounds: mortar that has begun to set has to be raked out before the next course goes on.