There are many ways that a building incurs a hole. However, there are generally a limited number of ways to properly fill the holes. Anyone involved with home and building repair has surely encountered the problem of locating a brick or a manufactured stone that no longer exists; it's difficult enough to find two runs of brick from the same facility that match exactly. Also, during this past decade, the industry has changed brick sizes slightly, but just enough that the new brick won't course with the old.

Textures and colors of masonry go in and out of vogue like the fabrics of the fashion world. But the memory of an incident can't heal until the hole is gone. So what are the choices? Sure, you could put the wrong brick in the hole; stain it to match if you can find the right size and texture; downgrade from all brick to some siding or complementary stone; or re-brick the entire building. Re-bricking often necessitates landscaping, maybe modifying a window and door, and relocating for a while. So perhaps we should re-evaluate: what if you can match the brick, its size, color, texture, shape, and even weathering and dirt — if needed? Now you need 350 bricks instead of 4,000.

How does one match a brick? There are textures like tree bark, brushes, worms, sand, slurries, fossils, vertical scratches (varying in lines per inch), rick-rack waves, brain coral, or even paw prints. As for size, the choices run the gamut from Roman to Norman, Engineer, Utility, Modular, Standard, Ontario, Queen, King, Modular Queen, and Western King (yes, they really are bigger in Texas), among others. Then there are decorative "shapes," such as bull-nosed or egg-and-dart, water table, pier caps or coping; however, there is generally no standard for any of those.