Repointing?

The builders have been back after an absence and have been sorting out down pipes and drain stuff and brickwork… More of that in another post. We pay them on a day rate and when repointing they do a lovely job but it seems to take them ages!

When they told us the hire company couldn’t collect the scaffolding tower we had until after the weekend, Owen and I looked at each other and knew what Saturday would mean…

I would get my tools out, I personally own two now – a screwdriver and a tool for raking out mortar. I borrowed the hammer from Owen and set to work raking out the old lime mortar in the places where it was falling out. Having finished it in the morning we decided to do the repointing ourselves and see how much we could get done.

We already had a sample panel approved by the Conservation Officer and we cracked on with it. With lime mortar the key is to not let it dry out too quickly, so we wet the surface before and then once it’s gone off a little you knock it with a brush and the spray it again and cover it with sacking.

I’d never done it before and was a bit nervous about getting wrong. I like to read instructions and watch how to videos but just watched Owen do one brick and thought, go for it! We got the repointing done and don’t my arms and shoulders know it.

Job well done and we’ve saved ourselves hundreds of pounds of labour. The builders were a bit surprised on Monday morning, but they’re better off doing the work that we can’t do!