Tuckpointing and Repointing

Fackrell Masonry and Construction repoints brick and stone across southern Idaho, cutting failed mortar out of the joints on chimneys, houses and commercial buildings and packing in new mortar mixed to match the original color.

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Single-story home with sealed brick trim and the repointed brick light post standing by the front walk

Repointing replaces the mortar, not the brick. The joints are the part that wears out first. They crack, separate and erode back, and once they have gone far enough the brick ends up doing work the mortar was supposed to be doing. It is a good idea to fix these problems before bricks start falling out.

The part nobody sees is the color, and it is worth being straight about. An exact match is not achievable on an old wall - the original has weathered for decades and some of what went into it is no longer made. With the help of my dad and years of trial and error we developed our own sample set, and it gets us to about 75%. Close enough that the repair reads as part of the wall rather than a patch.

Repointing also turns things up. Once you are into the joints, loose brick and stone show themselves. That is the time to reset them, before one works its way out on its own. And when the wall is finished and the sun is on it, the new mortar should be difficult to pick out.

What this covers

Cutting out cracked, separated and eroded mortar joints and repointing them with fresh mortar
Mortar matched as closely as the materials allow, working from a cured sample set my dad and I have built up over the years
Repointing a whole wall, post or element where a spot repair would read as a patch
Resetting the loose brick and stone that turn up once the joints are open
Redoing earlier repairs that were done wrong, such as mortar smeared across brick faces or cracks packed with globs instead of cut out
Chimney repointing, including rebuilding the top where the joints have gone
Whole-house repointing, worked one wall at a time
Commercial buildings, including storefront walls and brick planters, washed down and cleaned up when the work is finished

How to tell you need this

Joints worn back from the face of the brick. A quarter of an inch of recession is the trade's standard threshold for repointing, because beyond that the joint no longer sheds water.
Deep holes or voids in the joints, where mortar has washed out well behind the face of the wall.
On tooled joints, the hard outer surface worn away. Tooling compacts that skin, and the skin is what sheds water. Once it is gone the softer mortar behind it erodes considerably faster. Raked joints have no such surface, so on those the measure is simply how deep the erosion runs.
Mortar you can pick out with a fingernail. The joints erode back over time, and when the mortar comes away in crumbs the wall is overdue.
Open cracks running through the joints. On commercial buildings I regularly find separations wide enough to take a knife blade, running the full perimeter, on walls that look sound from the parking lot.
A brick or stone that moves when you push on it. The joints around it have failed, and repointing is how the rest of the loose ones get found and reset before one comes out of the wall.
A previous repair that looks wrong. Mortar smeared across the brick faces, or a stair-step crack packed with a glob of mortar instead of cut out and repointed. That is a rookie mistake, and it usually has to be done over.
Patchy, mismatched mortar from an old spot repair. If the color never matched, repointing the whole wall or post is what brings it back to uniform.

Questions people ask

What's the difference between tuckpointing and repointing?

In everyday use, nothing. Most people use both words for the same job, and so do plenty of masons. Ask for either and I will know what you mean. The real difference: repointing is the repair. I cut the failed mortar out of the joints and pack in fresh, which is what keeps water out of the wall. Tuckpointing was a finish, out of England in the late 1700s. Fine brickwork had hairline white joints, and if you could not afford it you filled your joints to match the brick, scored a groove, and tucked a thin white ribbon in to look the part. It was never a repair. So nearly every job sold as tuckpointing here is really repointing.

Do you do tuckpointing in Nampa and Boise?

Yes. Our service area is all of Southern Idaho, between the Oregon and Wyoming borders. That reaches as far north as McCall, Stanley, New Meadows and Salmon. I work from Nampa in the Treasure Valley and Blackfoot in eastern Idaho. Houses and commercial buildings both. Send the job through the quote form at https://fmandc.com/intake/.

Will the new mortar match my old mortar?

Not exactly, and anybody who promises an exact match has not done much of this. The mortar you are matching has been weathering in the Idaho sun for decades, so it is not the color it was mixed as, and some of what went into it is not made or mined anymore. My dad and I have spent years building our own sample set to work from, and on a color-critical wall we will hold cured chips against it in daylight before mixing. That gets us to about 75%. What you want is a repair that reads as part of the wall instead of a patch.

Should I repoint the whole wall or just the bad spots?

It depends how much has failed and how much you care about it looking uniform. A brick light post with roughly 30% of its joints deteriorating was repointed in full, rather than in patches, so the color came out even. That is a common request. On a house we work wall by wall and repoint what has failed.

Is repointing worth doing before anything has fallen off?

Yes. It is a good idea to fix these problems before bricks start falling out. Once the joints have eroded back far enough, the brick is doing work the mortar was supposed to be doing. Going in early means resetting a few loose bricks instead of rebuilding a section of wall.

Tuckpointing and repointing projects

Real jobs, my own photos, and what the problem actually turned out to be.

Tuckpointing and repointing

Repointing and sealing a brick light post

A brick light post with failing mortar joints fully repointed, and the brick on the house sealed to slow further weathering.

4 photos

Rebuilt brick chimney with a new cast cap, clay flue tile and fresh flashing at the roofline

Tuckpointing and repointing

Chimney repair and whole-house repoint

A brick chimney rebuilt above the roofline and loose, eroding mortar repointed around the whole house, with the new mortar color-matched to the original.

9 photos