In contrast, if you decide to take the DIY route, the materials needed to tuckpoint (mortar and lime putty) will run less than $1 per square foot, and you can rent the necessary tools for around $45 per day. Professional tuckpointing usually runs around $9 to $15 per square foot, depending on the height of the wall and the standard rate for mason services in your area. If the fillets used to create the finished joint effect are even slightly off-kilter, the whole project will look sloppy. The labor-intensive method requires extreme precision to create the illusion of level mortar joints. While homeowners can tackle tuckpointing as a do-it-yourself project, they should consider leaving it to a professional. What’s more, if the deteriorating mortar isn’t repaired, it could eventually cause the wall or chimney to collapse. A few hairline cracks do not signify the need to repoint or tuckpoint, but when mortar begins to crumble and fall out of the cracks, homeowners should repair it before any additionally lost mortar affects the structure of the wall. Since mortar joints are the weakest parts of a brick wall, it’s common to see cracks running through the joints, even if the bricks themselves remain whole. While bricks often last a century, the lifespan of mortar is typically 25 to 30 years-meaning it typically needs replacement or repointing more than once during the life of a brick building. The deterioration can have many different causes, including faulty workmanship, erosion from extreme temperature and moisture, or pressure from the overhead weight of the bricks. The edges of the bricks won’t be perfectly square, and the repointed mortar highlights those discrepancies.īefore repairing the mortar, it helps to understand why mortar joints fail. On the other hand, repointing results in a soft and wavy appearance on the new mortar joints. The fillets further fool the eye into thinking the perfectly straight lines are the actual mortar joints, which makes the entire wall look as if it were constructed with crisp new masonry. That’s because the mortar matches the color of the bricks unless you examine the wall closely, you won’t notice where the mortar ends and the brick begins. Some homeowners choose tuckpointing because it creates a crisper visual illusion. Both involve removing and replacing deteriorating mortar with fresh mortar, but repointing does not involve the additional step of applying contrasting lines in the centers of the joints. While the terms “tuckpointing” and “repointing” are often used synonymously, the final products are aesthetically different. Tuckpointing: The process of removing old mortar from joints, replacing it with mortar that closely matches the color of the bricks, and then embedding narrow lines of putty in a contrasting color (called “fillets”) down the centers of the new mortar joints.Repointing: The process of removing old mortar from joints and replacing it with new mortar.Pointing also refers to the actual mortar joints-or the spaces between the bricks-in a finished wall. Pointing: The process of filling mortar joints during new construction.To better understand the tuckpointing process, it helps to learn the following masonry terms:
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