re-pointing Archives - Westview Bungalow

This is a project that finally feels really accomplishing. Not that we technically lifted much of a finger to do it. But it’s definitely a bigger house improvement project – getting the foundation’s brick repointed!

Two houses over from us a house had sat empty ever since we bought our house. It was a cute enough bungalow…granite foundation, several built-ins (kitchen, dining room, and living room), a number of fire places, and even some original light fixtures! Though Patrick and I have been able to see past the neglect we realized it was still a house in need of some TLC. Especially the granite foundation was looking a bit sad where blocks looked very loose. Finally after all this time of sitting there a “For Sale” sign appeared. It sat on the market for months, and just before we went out of town someone bought it. When we returned from vacation we were thrilled to see they had worked on the granite mortar – and it looked great! The workers also continued with the brick foundation on the back of the house, so one day I decided to walk over there and inquire who had done it. We have long realized that our brick foundation was in need of some new mortar as well, so we went ahead and got a quote.

We had previously researched about repointing bricks. Unfortunately the results weren’t so fun. Basically from what I’ve read it comes down to this: These older houses were built with a softer mortar. Shortly after the bungalow timeframe harder mortar mixes were introduced. All this eventually means that using the harder mortar can damage the old bricks. So what does this mean? “We need to get our mortar analyzed for some $500?! And that doesn’t even include the labor or figuring out how to get the materials for the analyzed results?!” I’m all for trying to do things the right way and respecting historic aspects, but we had to draw the line somewhere. Some of the bricks already had new mortar slapped on, so was this such a bad decision anyway? I’m trying to make myself feel better here – I hope the old-brick-and-mortar gods forgive me one day.

So over the last few days we’ve had Victor and his crew work on repointing our bricks. Since the old crumbling mortar (can you even consider it crumbling anymore when it’s really just turned into sand?) was a reddish color we opted to die our mortar with the Terra Cotta liquid cement color. On most of the house they simply scraped out the loose mortar and replaced it with the new one. However in two locations the condition was so bad (they were able to pick out the bricks by hand!!!) that they rebuilt the entire section. We think they did a great job and are so excited how much better our foundation looks!! (Now we just need to get rid of that god-awful pink color!)