Brick repair – replacing damaged bricks

In Cincinnati when I look at a brick repair request that a customer has asked for an estimate on, I find the damage so severe that a rebuild would be the proper approach. However if a customer prefers not to have a rebuild done and would rather ‘patch in’ a few damaged brick we can handle that as well.

Though we always recommend a rebuild where warranted and alternative and more economical application is brick replacement. (see video here)Sometimes we may be removing damaged masonry and may be able to save a few bricks to ‘patch in’ an additional damaged area such as this wing wall demolition.

The customer knew that the wing wall was damaged and decided to remove it. She also wanted to  take some of the bricks from the demolition (if possible which it was) and use them to do a brick replacement repair for  the missing brick where the wing wall attached to the house.

At the same time she also wanted to  replace approx. 50 bricks on the lower portion of the chimney where the bricks were spalling, so a brick repair was in order there as well.

So we took the wall down and cut out the necessary bricks from the chimney shell. We were particularly careful with the bricks on the front of the home since this was the main wall of the house and had high visibility when you pulled into the driveway. We wanted this portion to look seamless.

We used our diamond blade chop saw to cut out the joints to make the brick removal easier and to prevent chipping that often occurs when using a chipping hammer, which is what we used on the chimney.

Once the bricks had been removed, the openings cleaned and the necessary quantity of bricks salvaged, we installed the bricks pack into the opening pockets using fresh pointing mortar.

As you can tell from the pictures there is a difference in the colors of the brick salvaged and used to fill in the holes. In addition you will always get fresh mortar stains on any brick installation and if the customer prefers to have a seamless finish then we stain blend the final brick work to match.

Here the chimney was not ’stain blended’ but the repair to the front wall was. You can see how the repair blends right in with the existing work.

After a few years of atmospheric soot deposited on the brick surface of the repair, you’ll never be able to tell that Handy Home Pro of Cincinnati was there.