Chimney repair and whole-house repoint

The chimney was the obvious problem. The joints had washed out, brick faces were coming off in flakes, and there were chunks of it laying on the shingles. But once I got up close to the rest of the house, the mortar all around it was loose and eroding too, and the old repairs somebody had already done needed to be done over. Mortar smeared across the brick faces, cracks packed with globs instead of being cut out and repointed properly. A rookie mistake.

The part nobody sees is the color. With the help of my dad and years of trial and error, we've come up with a system to match mortar that seems to be about 75% accurate. Matching mortar is NOT an easy process! It lives in a plastic box on the tailgate: a chart of mixes, colorants and ratios on one side and cured sample chips on the other. I hold the chips right up against the wall in daylight until one of them disappears.

The chimney came apart and went back up with new flue tile, a new cap and the base flashed back into the roof. Then it was the house itself, one wall at a time, grinding out the bad joints and repointing them with the matched mix. With the sun on it now, the new mortar is difficult to pick out.