Bricklaying and repointing in Bryanston

One house in a run. Terraced and joined property is nearly a third of what stands here, with flats close behind, and a terrace is the hardest brickwork to repoint well because the answer is judged against the two houses either side of yours. We rake out by hand to about twice the joint width, take the colour from the sand rather than a pigment, and copy the joint profile already on the neighbouring elevations, whether that is flush, bucket handle or weather struck. On the older soft brick, and nearly a fifth of what is here predates 1919, the mix goes to an NHL lime so the wall keeps breathing. On the 1970s and early 1980s stock that makes up the bulk of the rest, a gauged mix matched for strength is right instead. Where a previous owner has pointed in hard sand and cement and the faces are spalling behind it, that cement comes out first.

Shared stacks and parapets. On a terrace the stack usually straddles the party wall and serves both houses, so half of it is yours and half is not. It is the most weathered brickwork on the row: the flaunching around the pots fails first, then the top few courses. Repointing a stack, renewing flaunching, resetting a coping and rebuilding a top that has gone soft are a day or two of work once the scaffold is up, and doing it once for both halves saves putting the scaffold up twice. Where a terrace roof runs into a wall that carries on past it, the top of that wall is exposed on three sides and gets no help from anything, and coping stones that have lost their bedding, open joints on the upstand and failed flaunching at the head of it are a standing source of damp in the top rooms of joined houses.

Once a face has blown, every frost takes another layer. We cut out the failed units and set in a matched brick, reclaimed or handmade where the original is no longer made, keeping the bond correct so the repair does not show, which on a street elevation inside the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston conservation area matters more than anywhere else on the building. There is a lot of shared brickwork here as well, between blocks of flats as much as between houses: boundary walls, bin store walls, dwarf walls under railings and gate piers on and off the pavement. Free-standing walls weather from both faces and lean before anything attached to a building does, and we rebuild bowed lengths back to plumb on a proper footing rather than pointing over the cracks in them. New work is extensions and garden rooms in blockwork with a facing skin, laid in stretcher bond with the cavity, wall ties and damp proof course detailed properly, a lintel cut in over a widened opening, and brickwork stitched rather than filled where a footing has moved.

We do not price brickwork by the square metre. The joints decide it, not the area. A terrace with no way to the back except through the house, a flat above a shop and a detached house with a side drive are not one job. The platform is a priced line rather than a favour, under work at height rules. How deep the joints have to come out, and whether the faces have already spalled, decides the hours. Comparing quotes, ask the rake depth, hand or disc, the mix, the brick count and the scaffold.

We cover Bryanston, Blandford Forum and the villages along the Stour, Stourpaine, Spetisbury and Winterborne Stickland, and the DT11 postcode generally. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.