Masonry restoration in Corona, CA - mortar joints that fit your house and hold up

Most people call because the joints in a brick wall, a chimney or a garden wall have gone sandy and are falling out, and they want to know if the wall is in trouble. Usually it isn't yet, and what moves the price is how much of the wall needs new joints, how tall it is, how stubborn the old mortar is to cut out, how closely the new mortar has to match, and whether a downspout or drain has to be fixed first. The schedule turns on that drainage repair and, on a historic house, on the city's review, and I put it all in writing when I come out. We're based in Corona and do this work across the cities around it.

I start by finding where the water comes from, because new joints won't last with a leaking downspout or a bad drain running down them, and the National Park Service's repointing guidance makes the same point, that the downspout gets replaced and the drainage fixed before any mortar work. Then we wash the brick gently before we touch the mortar, so we can see the true color of the brick and the old joints. Our crew cuts out the worn mortar until we reach sound material, packs the joints with new mortar mixed to suit your brick, and tools them to match the joints already on the wall. Last, we clean up the mortar dust and leave the wall the way you'd want to look at it.

Restoration often sits next to other work on the same house. If a firebox or hearth is past repointing, we can talk about fireplace installation instead of patching it again, and when a newer wall needs to sit comfortably beside the restored brick, stone veneer installation gives it a face that belongs.

If your house is a historic resource, Corona won't issue a permit to alter it until the Historic Preservation Board, or the Planning Director for minor alterations, approves a plan, and the city's rule for historic buildings asks that colors, textures, materials and building methods fit the house's period and the buildings near it. On a repointing job that covers both how the new joints look and what the mortar is made of, which is one more reason lime mortar comes up on older brick. For a major alteration to a house on the Corona Register, the board may add conditions to the plan, so we build that into the schedule. When a job needs a permit, we pull it, set up the inspections and meet the inspector on site, and for a house that isn't historic, where the answer isn't settled, we ask the city's building division before we start.

Around Corona we mostly see older brick homes, chimneys and garden walls, with downspouts emptying right against the base of a wall and gray cement smeared over softer brick by an earlier fix. We see the same things on jobs in Norco and Riverside, and we handle them the same way, by dealing with the water first and then using mortar that suits the brick.