[Closed] Pointing brickwork DIY or not

for what at first appears to be a pretty unskilled (but tedious) job

Go for it! and remember to post up pics of the finished job, so we will all see how unskilled you were. 🙄

I've done it, for a maintenance job on an old hall. From what I remember it you just whack it in there with a small pointy object. Obviously you have to get the consistency of the mortar (or such like) right..

make sure the mortar you put in is the same as the one thats there already.

tedious - yes, unskilled - nope. Just remember, you've got to look at it every day, and maybe eventually sell it on. First dibbs on rendering contract if you make a mess of it.

you can get mortar rake attachments for angle grinders. bit messy but quicker than a chisel.

Also look at the mortar applicator things (similar to the bath sealant dispensers) - you fill it with mortar and pump it in the gap - helps get it right to the back of the gap.

An angle grinder is usually helpful for introducing a new pattern and make sure that you use a bucket handle.
You're quite correct though, anything done by builders is completely unskilled much like you saying "have you tried turning it off and on again 78 times a day"

Alternatively you could pay an experienced professional to do it properly (strange idea i know, but there are a few of us about). Do your own dentistry too and fly yourself on holiday, there's nothing to it, this training and experience lark is over-rated.

Doable but will take you forever and you will lose the will to live. At least get a quote and see if it's worth paying someone

[i]professional[/i] - a brickie?

re-pointing akin to dentistry and flying an airliner?

i think you've been at the blue smarties mate

since when has mixing the correct ratio and type of sand and cement, and making it stick into wee gaps in brick been in the realm of [i]professionals[/i]?

Doable but will take you forever and you will lose the will to live. At least get a quote and see if it's worth paying someone

+1
I've done smallish sections before and it was ok with a bit of patience and attention to detail. As someone said above, use a bucket handle (or a piece of old hosepipe) to get the groove, plus have damp cloth to hand to rub off whatever mortar you get on the bricks.

Bucket handle joints AARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! flush or struck please, or tuck for special places.

Regardless of whether its skilled or not, professional or not, it's worth giving it a go for your own interest and learning something new. Unless you're creating a property to sell on for profit immediately. Other than the time-better-spent-elsewhere argument, there's no reason not to attack most jobs like this yourself.

Start somewhere inconspicuous as the first bits will be gash. If you have the time you can teach yourself, a brickie will be quicker though.

Easy to make a cr@p job ot it, hard to make a good job of it.

Angle grinders should be banned for pre-pointing!

Flush, slightly recessed and never raised like crazy paving joints.

tuck pointing is a bit too technical for a garage surely aP

I guess I will at least get a quote first as I would prefer to be riding etc.
(rochdale if any professionals on here)
thanks

woodsman - might look nice though? Does require seomthing like Flemish bond to look right though 😛

Maybe not professional in some peoples opinions, but remember that next time you're handing over £50k to someone you may consider a rank ametuer and letting him pull half your house down to build you an extension. Yes, there are lots of blokes out there doing a crap job and getting themselves on watchdog, but there are also a lot of good 'professional' blokes performing at a level way above 'give it a go yourself'. Admittedly you may have to do a bit of searching for the better firms, but you'd do that when buying a bike a car or a holiday.

Sorry, i'll get off my high horse now. I just get fed up with the continual be-littling? of the trades. And yes, anyone can do a bit of re-pointing, it just depends on the quality of finish you want and how long it'll stay put, and whether you're happy to risk making a mess of your house to save a few quid.

professional - a brickie?

re-pointing akin to dentistry and flying an airliner?

One of my best mates from primary school is a dentist (which is handy as he's never charged me a brass farthing)
I'm sure that with time and patience, he could teach me how to do a filling.......... I mean, how hard can it be ffs ?

But that's not the point, is it ?
I'm sure that given time and patience fubar would be able repoint brickwork as good as a brickie.
And given enough time and practice, he might even become as fast as a brickie. But that's not the point. Is it ?

the point is that no one mentioned a £50k extension, and anyone with two one free hand and half a brain could repoint a garage.

I mean, how hard can it be ffs?

hard enough for your mate not to offer you a partnership in his practice maybe?

let's all start up as dentists if its that **** easy

Maybe not professional in some peoples opinions, but remember that next time you're handing over £50k to someone you may consider a rank ametuer and letting him pull half your house down to build you an extension.

I think the people who'd suggest giving it a go may consider giving an extension a go also. I know I would, I'd see it as a challenge and be willing to take the risk, but I feel I have a reasonable amount of background to be able to attempt it.

But the belittling of "the trades" is completely unfair, it IS a skilled job and it DOES take practice and experience to do it well. Almost every job could be taught to monkeys given enough time and patience, it doesnt detract from its worth. What should be said is that if you can do it without being a pro you're quite skilled, not that the pros are not skilled.

aP - I prefer English Bond or better still Sussex Bond (three stretchers and a header) ok, only because that's how my place was finished. Flemish is soo common place now don't you know... 😆

Make sure you key the cement all the way to the back of the gap, and each batch mixed must be the same amount of Sand to cement or the colour wont be the same, and when mixing the cement squirt some fairy liquid into the water and the mix will stay in the gaps better, also if its a hot day it wont dry out to quick with the fairy added. you can buy pointing keys from diy stores to match the gap you are working along , you will need a set if its a random rubble wall as the gaps will vary in size. 8)

>But the belittling of "the trades" is completely unfair, it IS a skilled job and it DOES take practice and experience to do it well. Almost every job could be taught to monkeys given enough time and patience, it doesnt detract from its worth. What should be said is that if you can do it without being a pro you're quite skilled, not that the pros are not skilled.

Agreed, but some of 'em don't help themselves - even the better/more diligent ones - they'll do 95% of the job correct then do something bloody silly on the last 5% 'cos it's quicker or more convenient or they've got their stupid head on.

Some examples - our previous house, various tradesmen:
relaying concrete at rear of house - one pooling patch nr house wall (probably rushed 'cos it was getting frosty);
new bathroom - great job, then bloke grouts round bath (which falls out within a few months of course) - and he was pretty decent (and he also had a story about he or his mate hanging some internal glazed door upside down !). But a 15 minute job if he'd done it correctly to begin with.
Assorted refurbished+new sashes (and this company has a good rep. and ain't cheap) - pretty good - 'cept OH gets them to then put brushed parting beads/matching h/w on sashes I'd refurbished 6 yrs before. Bloke makes ****ing awful mess getting beads out 'cos I'd carefully painted'em in (with the view of removing 'em - just needed a tap with a hmmer to break the joints). If I'd know I'd have had 'em out in half an hour. But a bit bloody late by then.

Current house - some of the flat roofing/flashing's bloody awful or been redone 'cos the original was so crap; some interior doors are flaking, god knows what they used for primer (mebbe had 'em dipped too?), painted timber cladding in front elevation stripped ok but given a wipe of hard filler (even filling a moulding) - result, whole lot's flaking in sheets.

Admittedly a cost issue but: not to mention the usual trick of boxing pipework in so that in the event of a repair you've got to rip the lot open (and hey, it's a job for the boys). Stopcocks around cisterns/snks are great..so long as they're not then tiled so closely they can't be reached (we're talking a 1/2"...)

And by way of comparison:
a workmate got in a *recommended* painter to finish some wordwork he'd already prepared and fired him after a day or so (at 100 quid a day) for being rubbish. (I guess recommendations are only much use if the person making the recommendation knows what a good job looks like). And whilst his kitchen extension was done pretty well, he had to get the guy that installed his boiler back in, to move it to where he'd *originally* marked it up to be. I think there may have been a similar issue with the electrician.

Another bloke - who'd have done it himself apart from the change in wiring regs/certification several years ago - has (hot-tub) building in garden wired up. Sparky fits boxes upside down (ie gland at top, with room around wiring) so *not* water/splashproof, has to tell sparky what the regs are, etc etc.

So perhaps that might explain why some us are expect the worst of tradesmen ! I've splashed out on a s/h scaffold tower to do some of my woodwork, even if I don't do the high stuff I now know what condition it's in and I'll get the the buggers to do a decent job rather than wave the glasspaper at it 😮

FWIW, my father was a builder/joiner/painter/decorator, and you could pretty much see yer reflection in our doors at home...

when mixing the cement squirt some fairy liquid into the water

[img] [/img]

fairy liquid is NOT the same as mortar plasticiser. Had a hell of a job convincing my father-in-law that one, till I could show him the difference between his crumbling mortar and the nice one I made. His brickwork was good though!

My father has always used fairy as a plasticiser, works a treat and his mortar usually out-lasts the brickwork around it!

A previous owner (I'm hoping it wasn't a tradesman) made a ****ing horrible job of repointing some brickwork in our house. Really messy. Luckily Mrs Udder's family is in the building industry, so we've been able to take off the extra slop a little with a carborundum stone.

I helped one of them repoint a garden wall a few months ago and, it's definitely not as easy as it might look.

I see lots of masonry where the mortar outlasts the bricks. It makes me shudder. Mortar is supposed to crumble out, that's it's secondary purpose protecting the bricks (apart from holding the masonry together obviously)

About £20 a square metre for repointing, apparently.

I see lots of masonry where the mortar outlasts the bricks. It makes me shudder. Mortar is supposed to crumble out, that's it's secondary purpose protecting the bricks (apart from holding the masonry together obviously)

And what protective purpose would that be? Seriously, I'm curious, you don't re-use bricks so I can only assume there must be a safety thought here that I've missed, but I'm not in the habit of building houses so something has probably slipped my mind. Of course you can have problems with mortar cracking due to it being very rigid, but using standard strength mortar this has never yet been a problem and no-one would go to high-strength cements/mortars for re-pointing. Unless you're thinking of using high strength mortar mixes in a place where massive thermal expansions may happen, which I suppose could crack the bricks in a large wall.

Mortar should always be slightly weaker and therefore more permeable than the brick it binds. This encourages the evaporation of the moisture in the brickwork though the joints rather than through the bricks. In consequence the mortar joints will decay through the action of salt crystallisation and frost more quickly than the less easily replaced bricks. Conversely if the mortar is strong and less permeable then the
bricks evaporation will take place through the latter and the surface of the brick will decay more rapidly than the mortar.
Pointing is an essential part of a building’s character, and any repointing should be kept to the minimum necessary to maintain the brickwork’s structural integrity and resistance to water penetration. The comprehensive repointing of walls is rarely necessary. Surfaces most likely to require repointing are those exposed to the prevailing weather and areas affected by other problems such as rising damp, or defective rainwater goods.

I would think aP is refering to historic/old birckwork, where the bricks are softer than today's. The bricks draw in an amount of moisture, then as it freezes the brick expands, with modern hard mortar, the brick cannot expand, as the mortaris impervious, resulting in the brick cracking, or blowing the face of. In victorian and earlier traditional lime mortar was and ideally should be used. This isn't harder than the bricks, and breathes with the fabric of the old building. It's also much more enivironmentally sound than using cement.

Now that looks like a copy and paste if ever I saw one 🙂

Glad to report never having any of the above problems with his brickwork, it's still standing happily 25 years on. Obviously knows more than he's letting on!

Yes it was. I also helped write it several years ago.

Quote that source then 😀

I would join in again, but i've got a classroom full of bricklayers to go and teach. Fairy liquid eh! don't think i'd better pass that bit on.

This encourages the evaporation of the moisture in the brickwork though the joints rather than through the bricks.

But isn't also because if there is any movement due to expansion or settlement, cracks will appear along the joints, rather than across the bricks - a somewhat easier problem to remedy ?

Start where it doesn't show, If you are learning, don't try too hard for a finish till it's set up for a bit. For an old place on soft bricks, rubbing it down with an old cotton rag can give you a perfectly adequate finish. - Depends on the style of place.

Mix a suitable (fairly weak is often OK) mortar which suits the type of bricks. I rebuilt 2 chimneys on a old 18C house with (mostly) lime, but I threw in a sneaky spoonful or two of cement just to help it firm up.

I would join in again, but i've got a classroom full of bricklayers to go and teach. Fairy liquid eh! don't think i'd better pass that bit on.

Probably not, there are better alternatives available. But since it was passed on to us as a tip by more than one seasoned bricklayer I can only assume that all the brickies I've ever met are incapable of doing their job, or that it's reasonably acceptable except in the classroom or on a customers site due to better practice being available at extra cost! 🙂 I'd not recommend anyone attempt to adjust spokes with an adjustable wrench, but at times I've been known to when my spokey wasn't available. When I worked in a bike shop I used the correct tools, at home I use whatever I can get my hands on.