More masonry work this past weekend—and everything hurts…
We’ve started digging around the perimeter of the house to repoint the brick about 6–8 inches below grade, where the mortar has all but disappeared in places. Years of water splashing off the ground from poor gutters and drainage, plus 140+ years of exposure, have taken their toll.
As is often the case, you never know what you’re going to run into once you get into things. As luck would have it, the corner at the downspout—where electrical work has also been done over the years—had completely deteriorated. It took most of the weekend to dig out, remove the old mortar, clean, wet, and rebuild.
Given the issues with that corner, I was only able to repoint about half of what I had planned. I went with NHL 2.0 and some local mason sand, which seems to have matched pretty well. While NHL 2.0 isn’t perfectly “historically correct” for this application, it should be fine, particularly below grade.
As for the foundation work we’ve been kicking around for the past year: the engineering team has finished the design, so we now have the drawings. We had hoped to start demo in August 2026, but that’s not happening. At this point, the goal is to get everything planned—estimates, budget, schedule, etc.—for a likely late-summer 2027 start. Time will tell.
Not much progress in the parlor lately either: a bit of woodwork repair, shaping, and priming, but that’s about it. The focus now will be to get the foundation patched up as weather permits
