The exterior brick walls of your home might be “structural” or “load-bearing” walls, or they might be veneered walls.
A load-bearing, brick wall is made from full bricks and supports the weight of your home’s structure. In fact, the brick makes up the home’s structural system, and it doesn’t have a frame behind it to support the weight of the brick. The bricks are laid one on top of the other to create the wall.
As a cost saving measure, more homes today are built with veneered walls. These walls are made from thin brick veneers, which are attached to another frame. So the frame work, not the brick, supports the weight of the structure. The brick veneer is just for looks.
From the street, nobody will be know if your home has load-bearing brick walls or decorative brick-veneer walls. They look the same.
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