For most people, tuckpointing isn’t a word commonly used in their vocabulary. However, if you’re living in a home with brick somewhere on your property – whether it’s on your exterior or interior walls, fireplace, chimney, or throughout your landscaping – you’ll want to educate yourself on all things tuckpointing. Here’s a comprehensive guide on everything you need to know.
Tuckpointing is the process of maintaining the mortar that is used between bricks. It involves removing any old or deteriorating mortar that may be unsightly or damaged in order to replace it with new mortar. Tuckpointing helps to keep everything looking new and beautiful as well as structurally sound.
One aspect people use tuckpointing for is utilizing two different colors of mortar in order to give the appearance of fine joints. To do this, you take one mortar that closely matches the bricks themselves and one of a high contrast. This creates the thin joint appearance, which can increase the aesthetics of the structure.
One of the main reasons you should tuckpoint is weathering. Over time, things deteriorate. When you add intense weather conditions to this, it happens faster and more intensely. Tuckpointing helps to maintain structural stability.
Another reasons you should tuckpint is for the aesthetics of it. You can give your bricks a complete change of look if you simply change the mortar color. Additionally, tuckpointing helps to make old walls or structures look like they’ve just been installed.
In order to avoid collapsed walls and unsightly designs, tuckpointing is crucial. This is especially true if you want to avoid costly teardowns in the future. As a bonus benefit, it can even add more value to your home.
If your home is relatively new, you may not need a tuckpointing job for a while. This is because, when done correctly, the original mortar will last a long time – sometimes up to 50 years. Original mortar is usually stronger and thicker than when you tuckpoint, which explains the increased longevity.
If your home is a bit older, you’ll want to make sure that you stick to the 25-30 year rule to avoid costly structural damage. Some other things to take into consideration are:
Unfortunately, there is a time when it is too late for tuckpointing. Loose bricks are bad signs. It means that you’ve past the window and you now need to do a complete tear down. This is vastly more expensive and takes up a lot more time, which is why we recommend timely inspections and repairs.
While you can add tuckpointing to your DIY project list, it is often better to go with a professional. This is because it takes a ton of precision in order to make sure that everything comes out level, strong and durable.
If you’d like to give it a try yourself, we recommend reading into step-by-step instructions. For a quick overview of the process, check out the following steps:
If you are doing a two-toned tuckpointing job then you will also need to:
If you, like many others, want to leave this job to the professionals then give us a call at Chicago Tuckpointing.
We can be reached at (708) 942-1951 or by visiting our website at chicagotuckpointinginc.com.