It's the last day of a short (3 day) week here in London because of the Royal Wedding tomorrow and the bank holiday on Monday. As a result I decided to to do the re-pointing of the brickwork along our party wall, figuring it would be a simple, one-day job, and necessary to do before moving forward with the flashing (see next post).
Re-pointing is when you remove some of the old (often cracked) mortar between bricks and then put new mortar back. The first step is to remove the old mortar - this is usually done with a small angle grinder that cuts out the old mortar. Once that's done, the open joints are cleaned, the bricks are moistened, and the new mortar is put into the joints. Once the mortar has dried a bit, it can be finished in a number of different styles.
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| The brick wall |
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| The old, deteriorated and missing mortar joints |
This all sounds fairly straight forward (to me at least), but it's a tedious, time consuming and messy job. As i was researching online the correct way to do this, I came across a web page where the guy said something along the lines of: "I find re-pointing meditative, but it's not for everyone. If you don't find it meditative, then it's probably best you don't do it yourself." Turns out he was right...I definitely did not find it meditative!
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| The cleaned and cut-out joints (after using the grinder) |
Cutting the mortar is messy and you end up completely covered in dust. As if that was not enough, pointing the bricks with new mortar is much harder than it looks. One is actually not supposed to get it onto the face of the brick as it may stain...but as you can see that's exactly what I did!
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| The new mortar in the upper joints, old mortar below |
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| Cut & cleaned out joints |
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| Yours truly placing mortar in the joints |
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| The finished joints |
Perhaps today I did not have my usual patience, or felt rushed to get it done, but regardless, I learned that re-pointing is just not something I'm good at, or enjoy doing. Fortunately it's a small wall and I did not have to do too much, but it still took all day...
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| The completed wall |
