This is the first installment of Ask a Contractor, our ongoing series of Q&As with Philadelphia tradespeople who know row homes from the inside out.
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He has been doing masonry in South Philadelphia for over two decades. His phone rings every spring when owners see the cracks that appeared over winter and panic. He asked us not to use his full name because, as he put it, “I already have more work than I can handle.” We are calling him Mike.
We met him on a job site in Passyunk Square on a Tuesday morning, three hours into a repointing project on a 1910 row. He answered our questions between mixing batches of mortar.
Let’s start basic. What is repointing and when does a row home actually need it?
Repointing is replacing the mortar between the bricks. The mortar is softer than the brick on purpose — it is designed to take the movement and weathering so the bricks themselves don’t crack. After fifty, sixty years, that mortar is done. It gets porous, it lets water in, and in Philadelphia winters, that water freezes and expands and the damage accelerates fast.
You need repointing when you can stick a key more than a quarter inch into the mortar joint. That is the rule of thumb. Or when you see white mineral deposits — efflorescence — blooming on the face of your brick. That is water moving through and leaving minerals behind. That is a problem.
What is the biggest mistake you see row home owners make?
Using the wrong mortar mix. By a wide margin.
People go to a big box store, buy premixed mortar, and slap it in. That mortar is often too hard — higher Portland cement content than the original mix. When mortar is harder than the brick, the brick loses. The mortar doesn’t move; the brick cracks. In historic Philadelphia row homes — and most of them are historic whether they are in a district or not — you want a softer lime mortar that matches the original.
I cannot tell you how many houses I have seen where someone did a “repair” ten years ago with the wrong product and now I am fixing damage to the bricks themselves, which costs three times as much.
What about tuckpointing versus repointing — people use those terms interchangeably. Are they the same thing?
No, and it matters. Repointing is replacing deteriorated mortar with new mortar. Tuckpointing is a specific finish technique where you put in a base mortar and then run a thin line of a contrasting color on top to make the joints look thinner and more precise. It is decorative. You see it a lot on nicer historic row homes that want a crisp look.
Most row homes need repointing. Some row homes get tuckpointing on top of that. They are not interchangeable.
How much should a typical row home owner expect to pay for a front facade repoint?
Ballpark — and this changes based on brick condition, mortar type, access, and the neighborhood — a full front facade repoint on a standard Philadelphia two-story row home is running $3,500 to $7,000 right now. If there is significant damage, old repair work that needs to be cut out, or historic lime mortar matching required, it goes higher.
Get three quotes. Make sure they specify the mortar mix they are using. If they cannot tell you the mix ratio, move on.
What is something row home owners do not think about enough?
The lintels. The steel bars above the windows and doors that hold up the brick above the opening. In older row homes — pre-1950, say — those are often plain steel, not galvanized. They rust. When steel rusts, it expands, and that expansion cracks the brick above the window in a very specific pattern: cracks that radiate up from the corners of the window opening.
Every row home owner should look at their window and door openings. If you see cracks in that pattern, you probably have a rusting lintel. It is a real repair — you have to remove brick, cut out the old lintel, put in a new galvanized or stainless one, reset the brick — but it is manageable if you catch it before the opening starts to move.
Anything else you want row home owners to know?
Caulk is not masonry. I see it everywhere. Somebody put silicone caulk in a crack to “seal it” and now I am dealing with the mess because caulk traps moisture, it does not let the wall breathe. Brick needs to breathe. If you see a crack, call a mason. Do not caulk it and forget it.
And clean your gutters. Half the water problems I deal with started from a clogged gutter dumping water against the wall for years. That is a free fix that saves you thousands.\n