Hi Brownstoners, My 1900 brick row house building in need of pointing!! Any r
ecommendations for masonry contractors? Thank you!!
ceci
in General Discussion 3 years and 8 months ago
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Guest User | 3 years and 8 months ago
I expect Urbandad is done with his renovation so likely needs to be on here less. RestContractor has years of experience and a lot to share so shame he’s not here aa much.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 8 months ago
jane both of them are gone, temporarily i suppose. Bill is busy doing this work. i am not sure where urbandad is but i miss seeing bill on here.
Guest User | 3 years and 8 months ago
Bill was posting here and I enjoyed his posts. If not mistaken, he rarely posts after that altercation with Urbandad over a stoop.
@Ceci Riedel specializes in historic work. You can see pictures from Cathedral Stone training on their site. I don’t know if they will come in high but people seem happy with their work.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 8 months ago
ceci:
so i contacted bill at laredo construction. bill posts on here as Restoration Contractor. he wrote me back and this is cut and pasted verbatim:
Originally a lime based mortar would have been used, it is available, Lancaster Lime Works carries different types.
You can use a soft type “O” mortar (350 psi @ full cure) which is available at Extech Brooklyn or Queens (we have had to special order skid quantities in the past, don’t know if that has changed though)
Or type “K” can also be used (75 psi @ full cure) Not sure if they have this.
Type O & K have Portland cement in the mix so not historically correct.
These can also be mixed by hand, but if you don’t mix the exact combination of ingredients, the color will vary, that’s why it’s better to get factory mixed bags.
i hope this helps you and colonial.
steve
ceci | 3 years and 8 months ago
Thank you, Jane!!!!
Guest User | 3 years and 8 months ago
@ceci Look into them as I assume you will reach out to several companies. https://riedelmasonry.com
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 8 months ago
ceci, ideally you will get a recommendation from someone on here who has used someone to work on older brooklyn homes; bob mentioned a name. maybe there are contractors listed in the directory here and they have a track record of dealing with the oldest brick homes. short of that, you might want to try to figure this out, maybe not entirely but get the name of that mortar used on the old houses, before you talk to the contractors.
i am a contractor and bricks and mortar are not my thing. if i had to call these contractors myself, i would not know who to call and might call run of the mill people who do work on say 1920’s houses or who make nice modern garden walls and who really know nothing about that old stuff. look at what i did in 1985 (and i realized the old mortar was soft but thought there was something wrong with it but i never went any further and spoke to anyone about it). if i had chosen to do more of that work for say 10 or 15 years and did not bother reading anything or did not realize there was more to learn, i would have made that mistake on all further jobs – and guess what, in 15 years i would have called myself an “expert”. there are contractors like this, they do not advance themselves, they do not know or understand what they do not know and they compensate by finding ways to make unknowing customers trust them. this sort of ignorance is much more prevalent in certain trades. when i did my own house, the guy did not discuss options with me; it was as if they did not exist.
as a contractor, i can tell you how to find the right person. tell that person that you heard that the old bricks require a certain mortar and see if they can talk to that – if they can tell you the type of old mortar and give you a solid reason why it may or may not require that type of mortar (maybe your house uses the modern stuff?). that is how guys like me check to see if someone has really been doing something and has studied their trade – even if we know nothing about it. if they simply come out and say “type n” and cannot talk any further and offer reasons for certain mortar or if they cannot name this other stuff we are thinking of (you do not tell them too much or name the product we are thinking of – if you do they will repeat it back to you as if they have been using it all their lives; play “stupid” yourself) or do not understand that other products exist, i would venture to say they are “chancers” who are trying to get any job that rolls along or they simply work on these 1920’s and newer houses. I suspect this trade is full of people like this who think that if they can afford a van and trowel, that makes them experts.
if you learn how to deal with contractors this way, what questions to ask them even it you know nothing, you will never suffer many of the pitfalls many other people suffer on here.
ceci | 3 years and 8 months ago
Thank you, great info. I’ll ask about what type mortar is best for this application!!!
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 3 years and 8 months ago
I don’t know the approximate year, but I think my 1899 house has the later kind of mortar. I vaguely recall a 1970s article about this in the Old House Journal, but I’ve given all my issues away.
stevecym | 3 years and 8 months ago
I am not a mortar person and when I did that wall in ’85 I used modern mortar when I later learned on this board that there is a soft mortar that should have been used. I think that is what colonial is alluding to and maybe some one can talk a little about that for her and ceci. Hint, hint bob, I think you can address this faster than I can find an old post on here.
Also at what decade did the transition occur? That early 1880s wall I worked on had the old stuff with narrow joints. By 1895 we had modern concrete being used in sidewalks and by 1920 the brick joints in these queens houses were with a modern mix. Can one pin point a transition?
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 3 years and 8 months ago
Steve,
He must have both a steady hand and a very thin blade. There’s no chipping that I can see. The old mortar WAS quite deteriorated, so it might have come out relatively easily. I was really impressed that Kevin agreed to recess the joints since he made them flush on similar houses he’d previously pointed.
stevecym | 3 years and 8 months ago
Ceci, right. Do this right the first time. I only mention what I said above, my doing it the wrong way, in case budgetary constraints might demand a stop gap measure. Masonry is the kind of thing if something is not done right away, the expense will grow in all directions.
stevecym | 3 years and 8 months ago
Bob, I just checked. The blades come in varying thicknesses, though me thinks not fine enough for the fine joints you reference and because the use of one of these grinders requires a steady hand, I am not sure how close someone could be expected to push it. It sounds like your guy has a steady hand.
stevecym | 3 years and 8 months ago
Yes bob. I was thinking of these typical concave joints we have here in the 1920s queens houses. Which is close to what we had in the commercial. Other than what you say, by hand, I have no idea how one would rake those joints. I suppose those old joints do not really need a machine anyway as a lot of that old mortar is said to remain soft???
Now that I think of it, before I realized how much I detest mortar work, back in 1985 I repointed an 1880s wall and I raked the joints by hand and it was easy, soft mortar.
ceci | 3 years and 8 months ago
Yes, I’m in the process of getting quotes for job… The brick condition is quite deteriorated around chimney and side windows. This as a result of semi detached building, and, I can see the lintel used is of wood….. One mason recommended replacing with steel lintel.
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 3 years and 8 months ago
Steve,
AFAIK the “correct” way to re-point historic brick is to remove then old mortar by hand, without using a grinding wheel, to avoid chipping the brick. That being said Kevin Morgan successfully used a grinding wheel on my house. I knew this would be fine because I saw the work he did on a number of other houses by the same builder with the same type of long, narrow, “Roman” brick, with extremely narrow mortar joints.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 8 months ago
and to add to what colonial is asking about product, there are two ways to point a building; the right way and the wrong way. i will elaborate:
i have had to hire masons to point commercial buildings. in that process, we had them remove all of the old or loose or worn pointing with a grinding wheel and we had them repoint, to some pretty good depth. that is the correct way to do it.
when we moved into this house in 2006, the mortar joints were worn a bit deep and seemed to be decaying in spots. they were unsightly. budget was an issue. we paid someone who had done quite a few houses on this block to come in and point but i knew by the price he gave me he was just going to place mortar over the old joints. i did not even ask and he did just what i thought he would do. with the exception of the chimney which really needed it cut out, everything has held and i am happy that i saved the money and went this way. but i was aware it was not the correct way and in time i had to have the chimney redone, the proper way. overall, i am still happy.
think long and hard about the condition of your brick and talk to a few specialists to see if you can find out what you really need.
colonialrevival | 3 years and 8 months ago
Just chiming in with a question for the group here: are those getting their historic homes repointed doing so with lime mortar?
Guest User | 3 years and 8 months ago
Prince appears to be Maestro Building Corp. Are you promoting yourself? I ask since you’ve made multiple posts about calling Prince or Peter at Unico and Maestro.