Repoint

The walls at the back of our house are in not so good shape. The whole wall has to be re-pointed at some day, but not this year, since it’ll cost a few thousand dollars. Repointing involves removing the cement between the bricks with a grinder and putting in new cement. Also cracked bricks should be replaced and the brick is sand blasted or cleaned with a pressure washer. I theoretically could do this myself, but I don’t feel like it since it’s a dirty and awkward job, better left to people that specialize in it. Maybe Alison’s brother Steven can help me, he is a stonemason. But he lives in England at the moment, and we’ll see if/when he comes back.

The few rows of brick that are just above our back porch are in really bad shape. I suspect that people (Alison lives in this house for 10 years now) didn’t remove the snow from the porch for many years and that eventually the melting and re-freezing of the snow caused the damage. The grout is missing, the bricks are cracked and they crumble when you touch them. So on this patch Irt of the wall needed to do something now to preserve the wall for a couple of years until we do the real job, and replace all 20 or so of those bad bricks.

And because it’ll get too cold to do any brick work soon, it had to be done now. I had postponed it for a couple of weeks already, but now I was home, so I went to work. Yes, my ribs did hurt, and sometimes even a lot, but according to the chiropractor doing things won’t prolong the healing process. It just hurts.

The job is done now, and I only need to seal the edge of the porch with caulking tomorrow and we’re ready for the winter.

[Photo taken with my phone, and isn’t of good quality, but it was wirelessly transferred to my computer while the phone was still on the kitchen table. Technology is so great, sometimes…]