I hired a local facade company to do “necessary repointing” on the rear exterior (21′ wide/4 stories) & I’m dissatisfied with the finished result; there are many spots/holes visible that still need filling. They’re willing to come back and repoint more, but they’re telling me that I really needed to have the entire back “granded” and repointed entirely (not sure if I used the right terms), and that would be an additional $2500. I feel like it’s a bait and switch; that they should have evaluated that correctly at the beginning, but I’m not sure if the patchwork is worth the money…if, even when they come back, the results will be OK. So the question is if “necessary repointing” is ever worth the money and/or if I should just do the whole thing over. One background note, my inspector told me the back would need repointing when I purchased the house 6 years ago.


Comments

  1. If kids live in or near the house be extra careful re. lead issues — old bricks were often painted with lead paint (even if it’s not visible currently) which the brick material absorbs. if these bricks are subsequently ground down during re-pointing, the lead becomes airborne which is a BIG danger to children.

  2. We had the 4-story rear wall of our brownstone repointed last fall by Cecil King. In addition to the joints, the job involved scraping and removing from the bricks a lot of old paint and cement rendering. They also scraped and repainted our window frames. The cost was $6,000 (maybe $6,500) and the work took 3 weeks. It’s only been a year so too soon how it will hold up. But it looks great and I sleep better knowing that we took care of this important maintenance item. King closely oversees his team of workers (which I always think is a good sign) and seems committed to passing his skills on to them. I’ve read good and bad comments about him here btw.

  3. joints should be ground out to do the job right (by hand, grinder, doesn’t matter). I’ve done several historic facade’s using a grinder without issue. the person doing the job needs to be careful and patient, something not possible should the job be underbid. If your rear facade wasn’t ground out, they only filled in gaps with cement, chances are it will pop out after a couple of seasons due to expandion/contraction.

  4. I don’t THINK you’d want “joints cut out with a 4.5 inch GRINDER” on an historic house (at least not on the front facade). It should be done by hand which, unfortunately, makes it even more expensive.

  5. Re-pointing jobs are very tricky because you can not assess the job without hanging a scaffold and inspecting mortar joints closely. All repointing jobs should not be done as a cosmetic fix but as a waterproofing. Re-pointing jobs should have all the joints cut out with a 4.5 inch GRINDER and then be tuck-pointed. As far as price goes, due to the restrictions the EPA has placed on these jobs “HEPA Vacs with single use bags, and surprise inspections with great fines for things that can not be helped”, it is usually cheaper to build a new wall then point an old one “Legally”. In my opinion, most of the contractors doing water proofing in residential Brooklyn try too hard to under-bid each other and then can not afford to do the job correctly. Do it right, do it once…. Well once in our lifetime.