About Mark Custom Masonry

I began learning masonry work at Bergen County Vocational Technical High School in Teterboro, New Jersey at the age of 15 under the instruction of my teacher Richard Weiss. I spent part of my sophomore year and my entire junior and senior year learning to lay brick and block for half the day. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I was heartbroken when I found out the year I was graduating would be the end of the masonry shop there.

Upon graduating in 2001, I immediately joined Local 4 NJ of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsworkers. I began my apprenticeship by training under my instructor Leroy Wilson who, to my surprise, had me spend a week spreading mortar on a wooden horse regardless of my training in high school. Regardless, I was thrilled to learn a trade and be able to earn a decent living at a young age. I finished my apprenticeship and worked through the union until 2008 mostly on brick and block jobs, but also doing refractory work in refineries and PCC (pointing/caulking/cleaning) on high rise buildings.

Aside from commercial work with the union, my mentor Dominick LoBue would take me on residential jobs around northern New Jersey and occasionally New York state. We mostly did repairs and restoration, repointing and/or replacing brick and stone. We also worked on flagstone patios and Belgium block curbs, as well as applying stucco to the outside of foundations. It never felt like work when I was with him. I loved being outside in the sun and hearing his jokes and stories all day.

I left the construction industry to work as a chef in 2008. I worked for several celebrity chefs in Manhattan before moving to Tampa in 2011 and being at the forefront of the upcoming fine dining scene. During the COVID-19 pandemic I left my position as Chef De Cuisine of a high end catering company to attend Hillsborough Community College for Entrepreneurship. While there I launched a successful personal chef company. One day, while working outside in the sun on my parent's home in New Jersey, I got flashbacks to working with Dominick. I realized that it was time to leave cooking behind and go back to the trade I loved so much, to get fresh air and sunshine while making the world a more beautiful place using the most durable materials on earth.

I returned to Hillsborough Community College for Architecture and Construction Technology and rejoined the union, brushing up my skills at their training center in Orlando. I am planning to continue my education in Architecture after graduating from HCC and eventually be able to design efficient and sustainable structures that are also beautiful utilizing masonry and related materials. During this journey I formed Mark Custom Masonry to be able to spend as much time as I can working with the materials I love and doing what I can to promote the use of unit masonry in new construction and preserving original work that so often gets buried under inferior claddings.

Mark Custom Masonry is based in the historic Sulphur Springs section of Tampa, Florida where I reside with my daughter London and my cats Doc and Britnee.

- David Mark

Owner/Mason